That is part of it but it goes beyond it. I have a group of friends who are pretty much all nerds and every once in a while we end up discussing how desirable different countries are to live in. Because we are nerds metrics will be pulled out. You just need to look at so much and depending what you personally care about things can be very misleading just because you scoped some metrics wrong. It's not obvious to everyone that Ireland has a high GDP because corporate profits get funneled through there. Looking at many European countries you might think salaries are pretty good, especially when PPP corrected. Well, Unless you are a software engineer. Houses might be cheaper, till you look at price per squarfoot... It's genuinely hard.

Yes but there are less easily juiced metrics, which no government or media company likes to talk about, because they are less easily juiced.

Add in that most media companies these days are a branch of large corporations and it's easy to see where their incentives lie.

It’s always been the case, save for rare exceptions (ie early internet) that the rich and powerful own the means of information.