The media business is just that, a business. And, for the most part, it is not the business of selling content to consumers. As TV entertainer Tom Smothers once said, TV programming is like the Styrofoam in the box your toaster came in. It's there to keep commercials from rattling around and getting broken. And like Styrofoam, programming is shaped with the commercials in mind.
Advertising can be factual.
Full-page supermarket ads are an example. But most national advertising is designed, like the programming packaged around it, to distort perceptions of reality. Nor is the effort limited to commercials as we typically think of them. Advertising is often created after deep psychological probing of research subjects, which makes it easier to manipulate potential consumers. The younger they are, the more easily and permanently they can be addicted, and the more profitable is their product loyalty during shortened lifetimes.