How can a democracy function when the media lies?

I looked at the headlines, things about Ukraine crushes the Russian Army, a more detailed article about the Ukrainian army busy burying dead Russian soldiers, about how the Russian hyper-sonic missile is hopelessly obsolete, how much the Russian public hates evil Putin.

Save some of those articles as evidence of how much the media lied.

 

I recall when we invaded Afghanistan how we would help them progress into the 21st Century
but we just had to drop a few bombs first, then just a few more, and so on, for 20 years.

And we blamed it on them for refusing to stop fighting, but just two months into the war (Dec 6th 2001) the Taliban
had offered to surrender, and to turn over Bin Laden to a third party for trial, but Rumsfeld refused the offer.

So guess who refused to stop fighting?

Those familiar with the three branches of the US government:
currently BlackRock, Raytheon, and the pharmaceutical industry
will know that Raytheon gets more money the longer a war lasts.

And when we lose a war the public just pours more money into weapons,
so the weapons makers get even richer.

 

Here's some US propaganda supporting Jaws:

THE GIANT FISH THAT SAVES SWIMMERS FROM DROWNING

Over the past year more than two dozen struggling injured swimmers were saved from drowning by one very large fish.
Sharks have been much maligned but this one has rescued many from death by drowning.

 

That's a bit like how the US saved millions of Vietnamese from communism, by killing them.

 

and America saved the Russian Federation from choosing their own President
by giving them the worst one they've ever had: Drunken Yeltsin:

and then bragging about how we stole the election on the front page of
Time Magazine on July 15th 1996

 

Putin invaded Ukraine because he thought he could become the next Stalin and put the USSR back together again. He failed, so sorry. Now what?

 

Do you have evidence for those rather unlikely claims?
If not those are just more creations by or for the media.

 

Why is the US so susceptible to our oligarch's propaganda?

I'll take a few guesses:

1 Many of the public believe the First Amendment prevents censorship of the media.
It doesn't, because the owners of the media outlets determine what is allowed in the media.
The US media is about as accurate as N. Korea's.

2 Few of the public understand how people in other countries think,
and have been fed false information about what other countries think,

3 Although the public accepts that most of our wars in the past have been
unjustified, somehow, whatever one we are in right now, is totally right,
it is the exception. Even though we were equally convinced by all the
others in the past when we started them.