Does mass media control people's minds?

These days, it's obvious that the mass media plays a huge role in people's lives. People reciwatch the news and learn  about various political events through the media. It is a well-known fact that in some countries the media is controlled by large companies and in others by the government. Moreover, independent mass media is the first victim of different political, economical conflicts or wars because the state's propaganda or company's shareholders try to do anything to prevent expansion of bad news, what the country is to blame for or information that would affect profits.
From one point of view, people always have their own opinion and usually make up their mind themselves given information. There are a lot of cases, when states with strict censorship couldn't understand how to struggle against people's mind. ??? In particular, citizens of the Soviet Union didn't believe the media at all, because they knew that all the information was false. You can control what is printed in your newspaper or magazine, but you can not control the opinions of your readers.
On the other hand, people nowadays don't have enough time to spend long hours reading different web-sites or watching uninteresting tv programms. There are numerous television channels and sites to choose from and it is difficult for most of people to find true and unbiased infromation. They much prefer to consume it in the most comfortable way. In my opinion, that is the point where the media become to control people's minds. They give news and show analytical programms in a very short period of time with simple and easy-understandable bar charts. People stop thinking and just take the given information as their own opinion.
The only things which can change this situation is explaining to people how important critical thinking is and how to protect themselves from informational wars. That also means that the government should support independent media.