Out of all the things I learned working in marketing, this was one of the most shocking.
Many times, cool news about a particular company or a new products was written, verbatim, by the company itself.
Yeah Paul Graham writes about this in one of his articles.
Really, you found it shocking? I thought this concept is pretty much well understood by anyone who's seen an infomercial.
I found it shocking when I first learned about it. Previously I had thought that articles featuring in the news were actual journalism, not just copy and pasted stuff from company press releases. It changed my view of what the news is.
More news is really just crudely rehashed or verbatim press releases by particular companies than you might think.