In the West privately funded media has increased polarisation over the last 50 years, so having stronger public investments in media could be helpful to stop this pervasive divisiveness. China has the opposite configuration where the state controls all information and you'll be re-educated if you say the wrong thing loud enough. These are both extremes that are undesirable IMO.
It's not really opposites, though. Private media is highly centralized, and the people involved are also highly involved in politics (Rupert Murdoch, for instance). In China, high up party members are generally very wealthy, and wealthy people generally are highly involved in the party, so it's the same politically-well-connected elite that would be involved in media in the west in any case - it's just backed up by f…
Another threat is foreign ownership of media. In Poland, where public media is explicitly controlled by whatever ruling party happens to be in power, there was recently a big media circus around introducing some media investment restrictions by foreign companies. Over 80% of Polish media are foreign owned, much of it in German hands, but not only. Best of all, it's not presented as representing the interests of those countries or groups. That's a huge problem for national security and a symptom of the neocolonial control the country is under (Piketty once described Poland as "foreign-owned"). Recent media brouhaha was triggered by an American media company (owned by Discovery). It's one thing to read about another POV. It's another to have foreign interests presented as your own and concealing their true nature. The Western media meanwhile routinely convince the Western public that anything against Western oligarchic interest in that region is fascist and other favorite epithets. They groom the public to view what's happening in a way that is untrue and benefits oligarchs. Colonialism still exists. We just call it other things now.
Also, divisiveness is not the primary problem, but downstream. If we focus on division, we risk throwing truth under the bus, especially in this climate of subjectivist "narratives". We are vulnerable to saying "to heal divisions, we must accept a common narrative". Heh, sorry, nope. That's the tyranny of the lie and the narrative makers (hence the foaming at the mouth by those who are losing control of the "official narrative"). The only thing worth uniting around is something true and something capable and worthy enough to function as a unifier. You need enough in common to create a workable society where coexistence and cooperation are possible. If we can't find something like that, then sorry, but you have no viable society.