Insofar I simply don't share your view, but this is fair to me. I can agree with your last sentence, it would probably be better this way.
1. It's not unique to government, this is exactly how, say, Rupert Murdoch or Jeff Bezos exercise their media power as well.
2. The sense of loyalty comes before the paycheck. You don't get to make decisions in the first place unless the people who appointed you are very confident that you see things their way.
The latter are, unfortunately, mostly in jails today, be it in Russia, in China or even in the US.
You absolutely need NBC's permission before you can start doing journalism on NBC.
My whole point was that governments don't need to get heavy handed to get a compliant press, since they can engineer it up front. The important filtering of news happens not at the desk, but at the hiring.