In my experience the opposite is true.
eg in Austria:
* politicans aren't allowed to interfere w/ the state owned programming and it's usually deeply rooted opinion in those institutes to be independent - they are a service to the people of the country not the current government
* private media are usually considered to be in favor of the party that pays them the most in ad spending and follows their own political agendas
* state owned news shows are usually known to be more critical (we done the research, stop BSing please) towards politicians than private ones (which politicians obviously consider unfair)
obviously in reality everything is shades of grey and not black/white. eg journalists still tend to have own political worldviews and report biased with them. but state owned doesn't by default mean propaganda channel.
Many forms are possible: the British BBC single broadcaster model to the fragmented model of my country with many competing broadcasting associations. I think most models work out well enough.
Of course, comparing to Pravda is a straw man argument: I was promoting a balance between (independent) public and commercial media
I'm tempted to say "Why do so many Americans hate America?" It seems like a sort of anti-national nationalism.
The real question is why they settle for this.
Look at the recent elections, those two people were supposed to be the best candidate options for presidency from the entire population? Really none of the people in the entire nation were better suited for this job?
... on the other hand, the two-party system in the UK is not much better, but they still manage to have the publicly funded BBC. fortunately :)
The cultural perspective is widespread and it's at the core of many Americans' cynical approach to the government. "We're from the government and we're here to help" are genuinely scary words to these people; they have not bought into the idea of government as a social contract, or the idea that a consensus of principles could lead to publicly funded media without excessive political bias. Instead, many Americans view government as a necessary evil that we only institute to restrain our worst vices, and if the government shows up, it's because something went badly wrong; that the best government is no government, which we would have if we acted morally.