I agree with that... it used to be the big channels were always corporate owned, but the local news and local papers were not owned by big corporations, and radio was smaller local stations and not big corporation owned.... which gave us a variety of perspectives....We used to have laws preventing a monopolization of the local media, like a company could own only one TV station , one newspaper and a few radio stations, but I thought it did not go far enough, but all that is gone now.Agree with the foreign elements, that's a given! And a major concern of our founders, of foreign interference in our own affairs!
But as far as independence, the constitutional requirement is that the press is Independent of the Government.
The Press was NEVER unbiased.... news papers have always seemed to lean one way or the other.... that does not mean that the news should not be accurate!
But News Papers for years have pushed agendas, even Thomas Paine's, and Benjamin Franklin's almanacs etc leaned.
News Papers are known for picking Candidates and supporting them, in the political arena.
It's good to have varying partisanship leanings in the different press..... it makes the Dem leaning point out the faults of the right leaning govt, and makes the Repub leaning, point out the faults of the left leaning.... always looking for wrong doing from the ''other side'' actually is a pretty good watchdog, on our govt...imo.
One corporation can control all the media in a locale and deprive the public of badly needed information.
That simply has disappeared and there are monopolies across the nation that even control local news now, making all local news even a thousand miles apart, say the same thing....
All of that is a HUGE mistake, and we really do need to split these big corp monopolies up and go back to the way it was....!!!