I've never understood how a country as advanced as that can rely on the state for media.

We don't that would be horrific! We have mostly independent media here in the UK

Inderpendent media in the uk lol are you joking me lol maybe a few newspapers like other guy said like inderpendent n guardian are better than mainstream but tgats nog hard and even those are not inderpendent peace

we don't. the article here is from the Independent, we also have the Guardian, which brought the world the Snowden story.

Ironically state owned media can be more critical of the government than corporate media the ABC in Australia and NPR in the US are a couple of examples.

The BBC have been covering up a lot recently. Another ex-employee has been harassed for the past year including illegal home searches and all sorts of shenanigans.