"They" want to make money, and the fast track is to exploit our psychological weaknesses. So they do it.
They are not out to make us unhappy, true. In fact, happy cows live longer and give better milk (allegorically spoken, not sure if that's true in real life). They just want us to seek happiness in things that benefit them.
"The Media" probably included all the small internet sites, too...
But that's not the point, the point is that we are susceptible to manipulation, and the media is doing it actively to shape us all into self-destructive consumers.
The media doesn't shape us, we shape the media with our attention. CNN doesn't derail their entire programming for a week every time a cute little white girl gets abducted because they have some sort of agenda. They do it because if they don't MSNBC will and we'll all watch that channel instead.
That's why I don't watch cable news. I'm more of an Economist kind of guy which is also media, though diametrically opposed to much of the media in philosphy.
Which is yet another reason the original argument is silly. All viewpoints do exist in the media. The media collectively IS doing it's job of putting out a wide variety of information and letting us choose, with our attention, which we want to see. Sadly more people choose Fox News than the Economist. This isn't the media's fault, it's ours.
The media isn't some conspiratorial, Big Brother type industry out to make us all unhappy. The image the media provides is simply the one we most readily accept. The enemy is not the media, the enemy is us.