Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent is an interesting read for this - it's a bit dated now, but a lot of his points are still relevant. As you say, I don't want to go down the conspiracy theory avenue, but you need to remember that media organisations are massive conglomerates - only multi-billionaires or multinationals can afford to run a media organisation. You can't do it on a shoestring or on donations. As a result people like Rupert Murdoch (Times, Sky News, Sun), the Barclay Brothers (The Telegraph, The Spectator), Richard Desmond (Daily Express, Channel 5 News), Lord Rothemere (Daily Mail, Metro, London Evening Standard) and Trinity Mirror (Daily Mirror, The People) control practically all the press in the country - interestingly the readership of right wing titles is around 14m before you include the free Metro, for left wing titles it's 2-3m. All are called the MSM - Main Stream Media
But these conglomerates are reliant on 1) other multinationals to advertise in them, as this is what pays for the titles - so they work hand in hand with the multinationals (it's one reason you see so little bad press about Coca Cola or Nestle) and 2) the Government - for access to information, interviews and press releases ect.
But the Government (in particular) and the other multinationals also depend on the MSM to get their messages out. In this country the Government is even dependant on the MSM to get elected, as no party has gotten elected without the support of Rupert Murdoch in the last 35 years!
To answer your question, if you can keep the populace fearing some 'other' be they Muslims, Communists, blacks, immigrants, young 'hoodies', druggies, terrorists, lazy benefit cheats ect then you can keep them distracted while their civil liberties are taken away (Snoopers Bill, British Bill of Rights, Terrorism Act, Trade Unions Act ect) and while more power and money is transferred to the rich, ie those who own the multinationals - tax breaks for the rich, austerity programmes designed to make the poor poorer and the rich richer, deregulation of the industries (look at how Cameron did the opposite of the Leveson enquiry recommendations to empower the press and increase press monopolies).
