I sort of agree, but also think you're mistaken, for two reasons.

First, 'the media' is not a monolith, but an ideological marketplace, and treating it as a single entity is dangerously wrong. Fallacies of composition are unavoidable whenever we generalize, but that's precisely why we must be careful when we make generalizations lest we mislead ourselves into making decisions based on an over-simplistic model.

Second, we cannot know people's motivations. It's inarguably true that the largest media outlets do tend to support incumbent power elites (I'm not talking about political parties or figures here). However I claim that this is not only the result of a conscious decision to perpetuate the status quo but also an unintended outcome of the capitalist framework within which media companies operate.

Local news stations are supported by advertising, advertising demands the largest audience, and the largest audience gravitates to the most impactful news format presented with the greatest degree of (apparent) urgency. There are two main competing news formats (Eyewitness News and Action News) both of which emphasize the spectacular at the expense of the structural, and both driven by a need for speed in both acquisition and delivery, lest people vote with the remote. The talking heads that report the news aren't so much instructed to lie, as forced into a disregard for the truth by the constraints of the product they deliver.

That's one counter-intuitive reason that you often get better news temporarily in the wake of a severe tragedy; the generic format isn't adequate to address a truly drastic story, and once reporters abandon the format they tend to do a much better job...but once the tragedy is over, economic logic reasserts itself, and the news goes back to the information equivalent of unhealthy fast food.

the media had zero interest in covering real issues, and they would much rather do a one-day marathon about Trump calling someone a pussy

I'm going to nitpick a bit here. The public is not that interested in real issues because that part that watches a lot of TV is not so well-educated and not so thoughtful, and prefers infotainment that provides drama and conflict vs. dull analysis. Hillary Clinton's biggest weakness was not her penchant for secrecy and denial, but her lack of a Big Plan and her policy wonk personality. Looking at her actual agenda and leaving personalities out of it, a disinterested observer would have to agree that she was offering a combination of administrative competence and incrementalist reform - a 'safe pair of hands' candidate. Donald Trump's offering had a lot of bold initiatives (giant wall, tear up agreements, and other abrupt changes) and very little detail on the how-to side - a 'kick the bums out' candidate.

Now I loathe and despise Trump, but I can easily see why large numbers of people voted for him, because his candidacy was a hell of a lot more exciting. If Hillary was the rather anti-social mechanic promising to fix that annoying knock in your engine, Trump was the salesman offering you a great deal - the best deal, the deal you deserve - on a brand new car with metallic paint and go-faster stripes. Regardless of how I feel about him as a President, he has a masterful understanding of selling things, and it turns out you can sell ideas just as easily as hotel bookings or lifestyle accessories.

We can blame the media for amplifying his relatively shallow sales pitch, but the media goes where the eyeballs are. I love watching C-Span and hour-long charlie Rose interviews that focus on policy questions and structural issues, but the audience for that is microscopic compared to the audience that regularly tunes into Fox News or CNN. People choose to watch airheads like Lou Dobbs or Don Lemon and mostly ignore in-depth journalism. This might be better with better education and so forth, and I don't think there's a whole lot you can do about that beyond reiterating the value of public investment in education and the arts; a marketplace of ideas, like any other marketplace, is going to prioritize the lowest common denominator.

Having said that, I don't blame the media too much for focusing on Trump's talk of grabbing women by the pussy. That was sensationalist, but it also addresses a real issue which I think you're ignoring; if you're a woman in the USA, then you have probably had some experience of sexual harassment and that negatively impacts your life. That is every bit as much a real issue as the ecological impact of coal or the cost-benefit ratio of some policy or whatever. It's also easier to cover, because it's such a simple issue to understand and because it provokes powerful emotional reactions for very substantive reasons to do with personal liberty and safety.

I really don't think that if media outlets had spent October saying 'Let's study the structural dynamics of manufacturing employment and the long-term outlook for the tech sector...in other news, Donald Trump offended women again...now onto geopolitical strategy and the debate over a multipolar world vs US hegemony' that the public would have risen to the occasion and got in touch with its inner genius. The media offers a distorted and often misleading reflection of society, but ultimately it is a reflection rather than an origination, and the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.