That strikes me as a bad-faith interpretation of the history of this issue.
The reason for belief in the protective effect of alcohol consumption comes from data, not corporate propaganda. Many observational studies, conducted by a wide variety of institutions and government agencies, and consistently arrived at the conclusion that alcohol's effects on all-cause mortality (ACM) are dose-dependent, but these effects do not necessarily converge on the origin. That is, as dosage is reduced, eventually ACM dips >1 for low levels of consumption, before returning to the abstinence baseline. I.e., mild drinking is protective. There is no plausible or coherent way to suggest that these observations were due to industry influence given the wide variety of data sources, investigators, and institutions involved.
The problem with this data is one that is common to wide variety of health issues; it's very hard to observe small effects. Most of our data and understanding actually comes from relatively extreme effects; the worst smokers and drinkers, large radiation exposure, major occupational health risks like asbestos, etc. That gives us great information about the what effects these onslaughts have, but only for these extreme populations.
The next logical step is to observe less dosage/exposure and try to establish the nature of dose-dependence e.g. linear vs. some power law. The problem, however, is that experimentation is unethical, so you have to continue to rely on observational studies. But observational studies necessarily have confounding factors that can be extremely tricky to address. Furthermore, there is no authoritative way to determine whether these factors have been addressed or not.
So, despite the best and most sincere efforts of investigators, the data 'near the origin', i.e. the effects of low dosage/exposure to a potentially harmful thing, is extrapolation, not interpolation as one might believe intuitively. Even small errors - the kind that are endemic to observational studies - are amplified when considering these ranges.
The result of this is persistent controversy about issues broadly related to hormesis. The true impact of radiation releases from events like Chernobyl and famously uncertain for this same reason.
Specifically regarding alcohol, the most recent attempts to control the confounds has lead some to declare that the protective observation has been eliminated. I certainly agree that, as a health recommendation, this is the conservative interpretation and should be taken used to make health decisions. But as far as the data itself is concerned, I'm not so convinced. I still think the "J" shaped dose-response has not been adequately explained, and there are valid mechanistic hypotheses that warrant continued consideration.
But if you would like to carry on a cynical world view that neatly blames all that ails on evil corporations, by all means.