The media’s content, the news and entertainment, the features and “specials,” is the lure to get us exposed to the advertisements. The end is the advertising, the process of inducing people to spend as much money as possible on consumer products and services. Entertainment and news are merely instrumental to the goal of the advertiser. They are there to win audiences for the advertisers, to keep people tuned in and turned on. The objective is commercial gain, the sale of mass-produced goods to a mass market.

— Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality