I mean, both have their glaring issues... but I think our modern system is worse. Independent news outlets didn't get a large readership but they did exist and people did express non-mainstream views in them - and while the main companies were definitely status quo aligned they attracted (and focused on attracting) actual journalists that occasionally broke stories that gave the editors headaches. In the absence of them being required to be the source of news (and due to competition from blogs running on a completely non-existent budget) they've focused more and more on advertiser revenue acquisition which really just only cares about the number of clicks you're getting.

I'd prefer neither system, and I don't think it's a binary choice - but if forced to choose between the two I'd probably go with the monolithic status-quo machine (even though I'm extremely progressive and they hated us).