I remember reading that in Perú in the 90s, Vladimiro Montesinos, the president/dictator's right-hand man, would bribe a lot of power brokers to take the administration's side on various matters. So far so boring: the interesting part is he video-taped the bribery, so we have a pretty accurate idea of how much he paid whom. Judges, IIRC, would get about $10,000, while owners of news channels (technically channel owners who agreed to have their press coverage take sides with the government) would get $5,000,000. In Perú. In the 90s.

If we had nothing to go on other than the volume of these bribes to say who had power and who didn't, I'd say...turns out, the media is pretty powerful. A news anchor is probably more powerful than 100 judges. And so, in some way or another, the American Government has to figure out a way to keep news outlets as happy as they demand to be, or suffer the dire consequences. While corruption in America exists, it isn't like the government could simply give them billions of dollars (could be wrong here), so they try to please them by enriching the conglomerates that own the channels in other ways. Primarily, nowadays, that means perpetuating copyright monopolies, under more draconian laws, in overseas countries that can be made or enticed to play ball.