US has no freedom of the press because all media is privately owned and even state media is privately financed. The entire 4th estate is literally just an appendage of the ruling class.

This is not the same as jailing "unapproved" journalists. The point is you can start your own paper/report/etc. without central approval of what you can and can't produce. The US is still a capitalist and authoritarian nation which causes some hindrances to this sometimes (see the recent police intimidation of that local newspaper), and makes it harder (but NOT impossible) to start things like coop newspapers.

Secondly, I generally don't buy into viewing people's and organisation's behaviour in this sort of way, at least not exclusively. It's too oversimplified and highly reductionist, even if I do think class is an important aspect of behaviour.

Refusing to acknowledge the differences doesn't mean they don't exist ^.^, even if most are capitalist most of the time, they promote very different things and engage in different behaviours (and then there was that one Financial Times oped promoting the end of capitalism which was hilarious ;3, but it illustrates my point that these organisations are distinct).

It also provides more routes for important information about abuses of power to get out, which is the most important aspect even if capitalism does seriously get in the way of this due to private accumulation of media corpos.

Furthermore, the US generally doesn't censor social media most of the time, and in particular has very loose libel laws which make it harder for billionaires (other than the ones that own a specific social media platform) to shut people down, like JKRowling recently did to people calling her a TERF on twitter who live in the UK >.<

Freedom of the press isn't private ownership of the press, it's independence and democratic oversight over the press, something that exists in no capacity in America.

What I consider is "degrees of freedom". Private ownership of the press is somewhat more free because it isn't directly controlled by the government, but it is still much less free than autonomous and independent cooperatives or collectives or other groups taking part in the press, and capitalism also reduces the ability for journos to report on certain stuff in certain ways. The important aspect is that people can form new outlets autonomously and they usually can't get shut down easily ^.^

The fewer outlets, the less "free" the press becomes, and the harder it is for new, independent outlets to form, the less "free" it becomes, and the more hierarchical each individual outlet becomes, the less "free" it becomes ;p (which is why private and especially capitalist ownership and class dynamics do have pretty significant issues of press freedom) - really the thing I value is information freedom and transparency, press freedom and universal access to an open and anonymous internet are means to that end.