I think that the fight for grants and careers is a much larger factor in low quality of the results than anything that media can do. It all comes from the internal dynamics of the field(s) involved. Overall, the media frenzy helps to increase funding and also to attract new researcher (both might actually be unhealthy in terms of pressure to get results and eventual quality, to tell the truth), but otherwise the media frenzy is irrelevant.

In hard sciences it's much better, of course. The significance sections in the introductions and conclusions suck failry often, but the results themselves are correct more often...

> is totally disgusting in this case

I don't see any reason for disgust. The study uses a methodology which is typical for the studies it criticizes. The question about its own validity is, therefore, entirely legitimate.