I don't think the news thing would surprise anyone either.
I think there's a weirdly patronizing approach that blames so much on advertising, and if by chance if folks got their way they'd be astonished to find that people make bad choices all on their own, and they know they do ...
I think it makes sense when people are quite literally inundated by ads. If you see a constant stream of advertisements, which thoughts are genuinely your own? What preferences would one have that haven’t been massaged in a direction by ads?
> I don't think the news thing would surprise anyone either.
People who you'd expect to realize this still read the news acknowledging everything they're till they get to a specific domain the news covers. A la Gell-Mann Amnesia.