What's actually being said is that the west is hypocritical, preaching one thing and doing another. Also, your whole argument is demonstrably nonsense because during the Cold War the west was secure enough to not block any Soviet media. It's not like Russia has a more powerful propaganda machine than USSR did. What changed is that now there is domestic discontent in the west due to collapsing living standards which is what's making people open to alternative views. Banning outside media is just an attempt to sweep underlying material problems under the carpet.

It seems like the West -- especially the united states -- gets firehosed propaganda from everywhere constantly, but it's divided into tiny and easy to miss pieces w each piece getting dispensed from CNN, fox, NPR, BBC, le monde, der Spiegel, etc or in movies and in pop culture.

Outside the west, they have a dedicated propaganda channels that serve the same function that fox news does for americans so it's easily disregarded.

Also: Western media is spoonfed to foreign audiences partially for the same reasons americans want to access it; but primarily as a means to inject pro-western narratives through non-governmental agencies like the national endowment for democracy; radio free Asia; USAID; etc. Also, in many cases local media sources themselves are captured by various means and end up becoming pro-western propaganda peddlers themselves.

a very recent and embarrassingly transparent example of this happened recently in Mexico, targeting President Sheinbaum. The tv station named "tv azteca" is owned by a trump ally and they coordinated efforts w the american non-governmental agencies in Mexico to start another "genz revolution" like the agencies did in Nepal a year before.

Cases like Mexico prove that the us empire is in decline, but cases like Nepal or Ukraine prove that it's still capable of doing a lot of damage on its way out.