Knowing people who work in PR/advertising, it's quite astounding how easy it is to influence people and worryingly, how often it's the case that people are, in fact, being manipulated. At least once-upon-a-time there used to be a critical layer of media, but now that's gone with direct-to-social or to existing media willing to simply collect the money for publishing something (or accept the cost-saving for a ready-to-publish article, which is all-important when people are increasingly unwilling to pay to read and free-sheets have mass circulation).