However, corporate control is definitely having an effect on the tradmed the whole world over, not just with print media. Increasingly news outlets are owned by large global corporations which have agenda that are markedly different from the well-being of the public or political institutions in that market.

This broadly degenerates into a 365 days a year pro-corporate low regulation low tax neoliberal propagandising with few honourable exceptions. This has knock on effects on all other reporting, Italy and the US lead the way in the blatant dishonesty of the way events are reported/copmmented upon, but no country can be complacent.

Britain still has two newspapers that aren't demonstrably stupid, I'm sure france, Spain and germany have them. but equally large parts of the UK media are captured by or compliant with the corporate agenda (the BBC is not innocent of this).

How do we counter ?? In the US I guess I'd read dKos, primary blue Dogs, organise for more and better democrats and hold those who sell you out accountable
for their betrayals. Obama is not the focus of energy because this is the long haul. He's just a good short term burst of encouragement, but I guarantee he'll let the American people down badly in some corporate sellout well before 16 months are over.
As a russian once commented in the days of the soviet Union "we have an advantage over you (westerners) in that at least we know we are being lied to"

keep to the Fen Causeway

To counter-act this print news companies got into the practice of purchasing local papers but then gutted local reporting, effectively stopping the paper from being a source of local news.  

So 'local' papers are, by and large, Yet Another national news source with the disadvantage, to the reader, of having to spend money to get what can be gotten for free from other sources.  Also, the quality of the information, and writing, has suffered as well.

(On a personal note, we quit getting the local paper when the 'dumb-sizing' became too irritating to bother getting the silly thing.)

Lower ad revenue to cost cutting to decline of product quality to loss of readership to leading to lower ad revenue ... is a feedback loop that will continue until one of the steps stop being a negative influence and goes positive.