Most everyone is interested in the news of the day, and of particular note, news that interests them. While the internet has blown the lid off of our ability to access news in new and interesting ways, such as people that use their cell phone cameras to record and distribute actionable news events, through social media and the like, for the most part, though, media is most definitely controlled by a combination of mass media companies, police agencies, and governmental agencies.
For instance, perhaps in your community there has occurred a particularly notorious crime and you rush to the crime scene, however since you are just a regular citizen you're not going to be granted access to this scene without having proper press credentials, and despite the fact that this particular crime scene is on public property to which all citizens typically are given access to, your access has been denied, in order to keep integrity to the scene, even though you can readily see a couple privileged other authorized press personnel within it . The bottom line is that access to crime scenes are typically controlled by the local police department, in other words, the police department will issue press passes to certain people and organizations that meet their standards as to the distribution of such a pass and not too surprisingly those press passes will be issued to recognized named media organizations as opposed to those that are freelancers or known muckraking news consortiums. This means, that the press in order to get access to noteworthy crime scenes and the like, have to on a very basic level, have a symbiotic relationship with police organizations as if they do not, they will not have any product to produce, edit, and present to their audience, and without an audience they will not have the advertising monies that keep them in business. This means, in these situations, the media whether they want to own up to it or not, will as a matter of policy, make sure to in their presentation and editorial policy not to bite the hand that feeds them, unless there is a firestorm of protest that forces their hand.
The fact of the matter is in order to get access to political, entertainment, and basic newsworthy events, beyond what the average citizen can do, you need to have a press pass and the distribution of press passes are controlled by known mass media outlets, governmental approvals, and police paperwork. The result is that often times the video that is shot along with the editorial comment that goes with it, are spun by whatever bias that particular media outlet is known for, but in any event, the spin won't be too far outside the acceptable norm of the community standards, so that there may be in effect, only two flavors presented, the conservative viewpoint and the liberal viewpoint and nothing much outside either of these mainstream realms.
This quid pro quo relationship that the media has with newsworthy events, affects directly the product that is delivered to the public, which means in essence that we are being told what to think by the narrative that is delivered to us. The best way to verify that this is true, is simply to go to a big media event, and then compare your recollection of the events to what is actually reported, and carefully note the differences, recognizing that, if your story and theirs diverge significantly, this proves the point that the storyteller fits the story to the script that they desire, and the devil with the truth.