I see what you're saying here: if the media prints lies from a government it's not the media lying, it's the government. If Israel says Hamas beheaded 40 babies and that's found out to be a lie, it wasn't the media lying about Hamas beheading 40 babies and so the media is entirely innocent of printing the lies fed to it by a government like Israel.

Here's the thing: if a government lies all the fucking time and the media keeps printing what the government claims anyway, then that makes them complicit in spreading the government's lies. We all know Israel's government spreads lies, so printing the lies it spread about Hamas is just doing the government's work for them. The media doesn't get to wash its hands of the things it prints just because it puts "Israel says" before the headline.

Do you think they're so incompetent as to leave evidence laying around that they had advance knowledge? I wonder, if that's the bar you set for US media, do you also set the bar there for, say, Chinese media? If Chinese state media publishes something that's untrue, would you dispute someone calling it a lie if you didn't have access to some official document openly confessing to advance knowledge? Even if such records did exist, it's not as if I, a private citizen, could get a warrant to raid their offices for it. You're setting the standard unreasonably high, you're just trying to shut down reasonable skepticism and legitimate criticism in favor of blind trust. I mean, what kind of idiot would write down "I know this story is false but I want you to publish it anyway," and then leave it lying around where someone could find it, when there's absolutely no reason to?

Here is an Intercept article about the fake news story published by the NYT to justify Israeli aggression in Gaza.

You’re saying the media knowingly made up stories because they wanted to trick the US into going to war in Vietnam? What specific examples do you have of that?

That's not what I said at all. The US government wanted to go to war with Vietnam, the media simply wanted to win favor with the government and sell papers.

Were you aware that, in the aftermath of the Kent State Massacre, the vast majority of Americans placed more blame on the students for getting shot than on the National Guard for shooting them? Were you aware that, leading up to the shooting, there were all kinds of fake news stories on TV about how, for example, the protesters were putting LSD into the water supply? Stories that they conveniently retracted, after the moment had passed and the chance for a backlash was gone?

Anyway, the fact that they lie frequently isn't even the main point. The main currency of propaganda is not lies, it's emphasis. Biased framing and leading language are perfectly capable of shaping public opinion towards their agenda. Historical events that would justify or explain hostile actions of other countries are very rarely deemed relevant, and the same with internal politics that might show that only certain factions supported it. Our own crimes and acts of aggression are downplayed or ignored, so that when the other side retaliates, it seems to come out of nowhere.

For example, the 1953 coup in Iran, which was conducted by the CIA and successfully covered up for decades, demonstrates that even if Iran had a peaceful, democratic government, it would still likely be subject to US aggression so long as they tried to assert control over their own oil. The breakdown of relations in the 1979 revolution occurred when the revolutionaries took hostages at the US embassy, but what provoked that action was the US granting refuge to the deposed shah - the very same man who they had previously installed as a dictator in 1953. I think both of those events are very important to understanding US-Iranian relations, but you won't hear the news mention them, the hostage crisis is always presented as this unprovoked act of aggression.

This is just basic media literacy, really. You should always be skeptical and aware of bias and conflicts of interests with anything you read. Unfortunately, there's a tendency some people have to put certain sources on a pedestal as if critical thinking and skepticism isn't necessary when reading them.