I am on Telegram and none of these channels really have any bearing on pumping a coin. There might be some movement on smaller coins but these channels rarely play a major part.
Typically what happens, is a whale starts buying a particular currency and magically you start to see news articles appear on major and smaller niche crypto blogs. Then the reddit posts start appearing causing a even more hurried frenzy to buy the coin. It is very similar to how traditional stocks are pumped.
On a side note, I am noticing a trend from Forbes, Business Insider, and CBS News that are very hostile to the crypto space. They will literally grasp at any resemblance of shadyness to write a negative article.