I would also suggest you not to watch too intently on US news. Try some England news or some translated global news of other countries to get a more global view.
About press freedoms, I heard read from Yahoo news that the media is getting very little about Iraq situations from the military and many things they couldn't report to the public. The fact that I haven't seen any news on TV about such a thing worried me. What happened to the right of Americans to know the truth of the situation in Iraq in which their sons and daughters are fighting in?
I just want to put my two cents in as the troubles I started to see in America's value of these freedoms in the face of terrorism and a war with ulterior motives.