Fans of Jon Ham’s “Media Mangle” columns are likely to appreciate John Warren’s most recent contribution to TownHall.com.

For the two and a quarter centuries of our republic, Americans have expected the fourth estate to tell it raw and straight. In the lifetime of Baby Boomers, however, the Progressive Establishment, abetted by most news and information outlets—State Media—and Academia, have distorted our founding truths in much of what we hear and watch, not unlike the Soviet Union’s Pravda and China’s People’s Daily.

The term, “State Media” has been an apt descriptor for every administration’s media pawns since WWII, but in the past seven years, collaboration by government and friendly outlets has reached new heights of deception and perhaps, illegality. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) pointed out there’s been nothing new about the White House’s use of government resources for propaganda in recent decades, but in the early years of the Obama administration, it had already “leveraged ties to the arts and entertainment community to embed propaganda in the content of television programming and artwork. These propaganda efforts violated appropriations riders and federal law prohibiting the use of appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda purposes.”

The CRS stipulated: “The President’s right to sell his policy recommendations to Congress and the public is not disputed; however, using the resources of the federal government to activate a sophisticated propaganda and lobbying campaign is an abuse of office….”