I agree that TV stations and websites don't have to be purely vessels for advertising, but in today's climate of slim margins – due to an expectation that everything is 'free' – and sliding ethics, advertising lends more and more bias to operations. And that bias has been there as long as there has been advertiser funded operations.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/news_hole

We could just return to a culture of paying for things (that are conspicuously not tracked) and this whole imposition of advertising in our daily consumption can go away. But the vast majority of people simply don't care.