Same thing happens in Europe too. Two cases I can think of in my country are Jonathan Jacob and Jozef Chovanec. Both investigations only started rolling when someone leaked recordings of what happened in their cells to the media. The government has very few incentives to investigate their own, that's why media is an invaluable part of democracy.

That is also why media is one of the first targets of most "electoral" autocracies. This can be seen in European countries like Hungary and Turkey where independent media has more or less disappeared, and they are massively attacked by other governments like Poland.

Furthermore, that is why public broadcasting is a primary target of populist/far-right campaigns in most other countries too: their propaganda focuses on the unpopular "unjustified" broadcast fees, while they really want to get rid of these largely independent stations, and replace them with commercial competitors that are controlled by media moguls instead of democratic structures.

I'm always sad to see the negative stand against all the media on forums like here or reddit.

From my central European perspective, (serious) media are so incredibly important for our society and democracy.

I understand that the USA has somewhat more independent and strong public institutions than us and can rely on them, but still.

As an American, I say that the media IS important. That’s why its all too frequent bias and sloppiness is so problematic.

Where I live, false or exaggerated headlines are the norm. Scary headlines are lucrative! If we can’t depend on the media to do its job right, then who does that function?

Agreed. I happen to be very critical of the media and I think the media is an invaluable institution. These aren’t contradictory statements, I criticize because I care (however cliche that may sound). I share the media’s political biases for the most part—I’m a liberal—but that the whole of the mainstream media (and academia, etc) is so uniformly, overtly, and explicitly biased in the same direction is IMO one of the drivers for our national division and for right-wing mistrust in our national institutions.

And yes, I know all of the rhetorical defenses for a propagandist media (“no one is perfectly neutral so why bother trying?”, “you have to choose between the progressive narrative and literal Naziism”, etc).

Sinclair and Murdochs empire (the two most consumed sources of media in the us) both skew heavily right.

Why is fox, the largest tv news channel, never allowed to count as mainstream?

Given that the media in Europe is chock-full of lies and/or accidental falsehoods (depending on your outlook on life), I'm really interested in why you think it's important (other than as a tool for mass manipulation, for which I'd say we may almost have invented more effective tools depending on how you scope 'media').

It's important because it uncovers crime and corruption, asks politicians and institutions tough questions and keeps them in check.

The situation in Hungary has gone really south once there was no strong independent media outlet left. Poland is following a similar path.

That one isn’t an American phenomenon, that happens here in Australia too to some extent