It depends on exactly what you mean by independent.

I suppose I'm really interested in locally-owned media outlets that receive their funding from the readers/grants thus avoiding the ownership of oligarchs/conglomerates.

Thank you for the recommendations. I will check out the outlets https://rnz.co.nz/ & http://thespinoff.co.nz/.

you could argue it’s not a good democracy if everyone is manipulated by big tech and billionaires.

However a large amount of those billionaires who reside in the United State are enabled by the problems of: first-past-the-post, corporate media, partisan district drawing, corruption, electoral colleges, attacks on the journalists, insider trading, lack of political party competition, partisan district drawing, voter suppression, scapegoating, market consolidation, declining unionization rates, propaganda and lack of campaign contribution limits. The international companies that originate from there tend to grow too large in size leading them to expand into the smaller countries thus displacing the local businesses with the corrupting influence that entails.

The country Russia also causes major issues by employing teams of individuals to operate as online troll farms to flame the divisions on wedge issues every nation has, to push the public to support the parties who align the most with them ideologically. Not mention the concerning developments from the BJP and the CCP persecuting those who do not align with their vision of their countries.

Authoritarians tend to support those with similar tendencies.

We must keep encouraging people to support local cooperatives, democratic participation, transparency and decentralization. We will need to be creative in how we defend democracy around the globe.