I'm not sure about Facebook due to not using it, but Google's actually one of the less shady companies in this area. At least they do let you opt out of tracking-based advertising. Other sites don't. For instance, I just tried to view a Forbes article and it redirected to an interstitial which defaulted to letting them track me for advertising purposes, then when I changed the setting to only allow essential cookies it made me wait for several minutes with only a Cancel button, then finally redirected every page on the site to a message saying "You have arrived at this page because you have chosen not to consent to the use of cookies that help us provide a great experience (and great content) to you free of charge" and not allowing me to do anything but change my settings back.
Journalists are just a lot less willing to criticise the state of the free press than they are to attack companies like Google and Facebook that eat into their collective profits.