Dear Coffee,
One chooses to believe whatever. It does not prevent them from reading fiction and understanding it as fiction. If you understand fiction as non-fiction and non-fiction as fiction, than your belief systems are not working properly. Media should be read as media. Ideally, one with a strong foundation of truth is able to read all lines of media and get the same picture. It is not hard to pick out the narrative from any attempts at controlling said narrative. If someone only reads one type of media, it points to their inability to pick the details from the ideas. And that person is likely being played by the very standard s/he claims to oppose.
Science is the same thing. If one can only agree with the few scientists on a given topic, That most likely points to a deficiency in knowing how to read the sciences. For example, the difference between the subjects and the systems. Science always shakes up our beliefs of scientific concepts. It never touches our sense of purpose etc.
Your statement that the media gets paid to report or not report a certain way, is completely absurd. The marketing aspect of media is around since before you were born. And independent journalism was never threatened by it until the modern day. You could thank your super media conglomerates for changing that. You live in a bizarre world, if nation altering realities are being held from the public on the basis of a few Benjamins. And facts today are easily verifiable without the mainstream media.