I found the greatest offenders of media that portrays China in a poor light are CCTV, xinhua, people’s daily, etc... if you consume those media, you get the impression that China is a backwards authoritarian state with lots of flaws, but of course the truth is more nuanced.

I first visited China in 1999, did a 6 month Chinese course at PKU in 2002, and lived/worked in Beijing from 2007-2016. Frankly, the political situation simply got worse from 2008 on, whereas before it really looked like China was opening up and would continue to do so.