That's almost always been true though. See: newspaper era, radio era, tv era...
The closest most democratic societies have gotten for most of the time is a diversity of large press entities that counterbalance each other. Possibly with the addition of a publicly-funded alternative.
You're typically only going to have a few wide-distribution press entities, but what seems more important is that they're (a) independent (of each other and the government), (b) financially solvent, and (c) represent a diversity of opinion / constituents.
Though I'd say the US fails those three tests because of conglomerate ownership without true independence (e.g. Washington Post being beholden to Bezos' business interests), the cannibalization of ad revenue by Google / Meta (without either funding a replacement for news), and increasing corporate consolidation (e.g. Nexstar getting preferential treatment by the current FCC to further breach TV station ownership caps).
The closest most democratic societies have gotten for most of the time is a diversity of large press entities that counterbalance each other. Possibly with the addition of a publicly-funded alternative.
You're typically only going to have a few wide-distribution press entities, but what seems more important is that they're (a) independent (of each other and the government), (b) financially solvent, and (c) represent a diversity of opinion / constituents.
Though I'd say the US fails those three tests because of conglomerate ownership without true independence (e.g. Washington Post being beholden to Bezos' business interests), the cannibalization of ad revenue by Google / Meta (without either funding a replacement for news), and increasing corporate consolidation (e.g. Nexstar getting preferential treatment by the current FCC to further breach TV station ownership caps).