Yes Dick, and even more people do believe what mass media say. You open the newspaper in the morning unaware of the many horrendous means of manipulation applied to information to completely change its real meaning.
We are undergoing a process of media democratization in Argentina where some groups do own so many diffusion channels (TV, papers, radio, etc.), that make out of them virtual owners of reality.
We happen to have a TV program run by a public (state run) channel which sheds light on most of this issues:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/6,_7,_8. Being run by the government, of course, you can't expect they don't do a little marketing for their own cause, but the fight results in a good thing for news consumers.
In a way, the "Matrix" is kind of real when you realize modern media literally sets up the agenda, the reality, concepts, values, political views and everything else you use to make your own decisions. They really own part of your brain, as crazy as it may sound.