more specifically I consider the USA (varying by state and location) to be pretty authoritarian in a lot of ways, though they have decent press freedom (even if there are pretty severe issues with copyright and larger media conglomerates being owned by investment corpos), which is kind of an anomaly given many other things like drug laws and police militarisation and such :/ (many other things too)

Damn, you’re like 90% of the way there, but you still only see the trees.

US has no freedom of the press because all media is privately owned and even state media is privately financed. The entire 4th estate is literally just an appendage of the ruling class. Freedom of the press isn’t private ownership of the press, it’s independence and democratic oversight over the press, something that exists in no capacity in America.

In the US you have freedom to purchase the press