Whitespace versus content

Given a larger amount of content (e.g. a table of data or a list of fields and options in a form) that absolutely need to be on a website, would it be better to space it out so that scrolling is necessary but there is always a lot of whitespace / not too much content in the same view, or would it be better to put as much as possible on one view and risk cluttering the screen?

To give an example, we have a table with many elements (around 30-100 lines). Each row just contains text and a few buttons that link to further actions that can be done with the corresponding entry.

Would it be better to use more whitespace (like e.g. Bootstrap does by default) to make each row higher so that only about 10-15 rows fit onto the screen at the same time, or would it be better to reduce the whitespace so that more lines (~30) fit on the screen at the same time?

We are having this discussion at the moment where one side of the argument says, it is better to have less content on one screen (e.g. how Google does it versus Yahoo, so there are only very few elements on the screen) so that the user is not overwhelmed by too many items at the same time. E.g. too much stuff (no matter if relevant or not) is bad.

The other side of the argument says, it's better to reduce unnecessary/unrelated content (e.g. how Google does it versus Yahoo, as in there is only a search bar and no unrelated/unnecessary stuff on the screen), but reducing the amount of relevant content is not helpful. E.g. Content is better than whitespace, but whitespace is better than unnecessary stuff.