This is an emergent property of there being a big source of income from a single entity. Nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds. It’s not that local media is

This is an emergent property of there being a big source of income from a single entity. Nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds. It’s not that local media is paid to shut up, it’s that many of the viewers and advertisers directly benefit from the big entity and will become angry at the news unless it has irrefutable and overwhelming evidence of some wrong doing.