[AsyncAwait]

> They aren’t directly controlled by the government though.

No. They're controlled by multinational corporations with clear profit motives and conflicts of interests and thus tend to be biased in favor of those industries.

In China you have state dominance so you have state controlled media, in the U.S. you have corporate media. That's not independent media, just the other side of the same coin.

And if your argument is "they don't control the army", the military industrial complex means they don't have to do so directly.