> There's no such thing as government funded independent media.

That is just ridiculously false. Take for example the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) which was recently forced to shut down due to losing its federal funding.

And I'm not talking about accreditation for individual journalists. I'm talking about funding reputable and honest publication groups.

With more funding to improve local coverage and access, we not only get better diversity of reporting, we also help cover local events and topics better for people.

That's true, but government funded media has different incentives than private media. To be honest, at least in the past few decades where media has become so concentrated, we basically have state media anyway but it is profit driven and sensationalist. Public media would at least allow investigative reporting to come back and provide an alternative choice in the market that is less sensationalist.