Oh, so very true. They're in the business of selling offence and prurience, with a large slice of agenda pushing on the side.
A lady of my acquaintance describes herself as a survivor of the media bubble who got out before it rotted her soul. The thing that pushed her over the edge was catching the mainstream and award winning Scotsman newspaper photoshopping slogans on to pictures of protest signs at an anti-Bush II rally in Edinburgh back in 2005 to jazz them up a bit. In the early edition, they tucked "Bush uses his flag as a cum rag" into one corner, just for a giggle.
STV once used stock footage of me taking part in a re-enactment of the Battle of Bannockburn in a piece on the swivel eyed end of Scottish nationalism, stating as a fact that "many of these people hold strong xenophobic views" based on interviewing one "English oot!" nutcase they'd found there, who'd attended not as a participant, but as paying punter.
Laugh was, I was a Scot participating on the English side. So, I'm xenophobic against myself?
It's all fiction at best, propaganda at worst. Dirty, dirty smear merchants, they can get bent.