regarding whited out text (so SPOILERS!)
It does make things too easy. She must be an optimist.
Funny, my friends and I were discussing this very topic recently, spun out of a conversation about the 70's song of my youth "Harper Valley PTA" in which the town moral majority hyprocrites are exposed at the end on "the day my mother socked it to the Harper Valley PTA", and touching on the conclusion of obscure film RIDERS OF THE STORM in which Reagen-era moral majority hypocrites are exposed by having their sex tapes broadcast over the media. And we realized that this was a conceit (that evil can be thwarted by exposing its hypocrisy) that probably died with our generation for a number of reasons, but including:
1. The concept derives from a time when the media still did its job (generally) in service of the public's best interests and not its corporate owners (chalk up a win for Ronnie).
2. The concept derives from a time when there was still the (albeit sickly and failing, by my generation) belief that "the general public" were educated enough to realize what hypocrisy implied, and not so apathetic and unmotivated enough not to be outraged about it. (If you've never understood some of the extreme concepts of the 60's, realize that they were based on the general assumption that your neighbor would do the greatest good with the most freedom and best information - a concept, right or wrong (and there's probably too much to be said about that to go into here) our culture has generally abandoned.
3. The treatment of everything as media spectacle benefits abuse of power because then anything done is equatable to a sex scandal or drunk driving arrest. In fact, people want to hear about those much more than some boring old political conspiracy because the latter are "entertaining". The spectacle makes stars of all its participants, pedophile or president, and thus tacitly signifies the public's approval ("you're good enough to generate ratings for us/keep our eyes on ads, we approve"). Ollie North is now a "newscaster", while nuns raped and tortured by Contras are dead and forgotten.
4. The spectacle thrives on the moment. The perfect modern man (able to be sold anything - even the same thing over and over, caring not where it comes from or how his leaders act) is the man without memory. So exposing the evil conspiracy to the people only means the clock is ticking on how soon until they get bored with it as a spectacle, and then it gets forgotten.
So, yes, it does make things too easy. I do have to say, I don't read much sci-fi but your reduction of "what you like" is pretty much my taste as well, although perhaps with less focus on cultural changes (or at least, the surface cultural changes that cyberpunk, at its weakest, wallowed in) and more on the human level (Bradbury was my exemplar for sci-fi, not hard sf like Asimov) so if there's any books that you liked that sound like that, I'd be interested in getting some titles.
