«Mass journalism is a powerful force in society, but not an independent one. It always, in the end, follows the larger forces, especially the money and the interests of the people with money.»

American (and not just american) media and politics are largely "pay per play", and your story has a background: there used to be a greater diversity of "sponsors", in particular the labor unions were also buyers of political and media influence. Since the labor unions have been cut down to size the only significant "sponsors" for politicians and media have been factions of the hard right, whether the tradcon (largely Republican) hard right, or the neoliberal (both Democratic and Republican) hard right. My usual quote from an interview with Ralph Nader:

“in 1979. Tony Coelho, who was a congressman from California, and who ran the House Democratic Campaign treasure chest, convinced the Democrats that they should bid for corporate money, corporate PACs, that they could raise a lot of money. Why leave it up to Republicans and simply rely on the dwindling labor union base for money, when you had a huge honeypot in the corporate area? And they did.”