My take on this is no they don’t. As long as they are truthful they only report on the quality of the product and prevent many people of spending a lot of money from losing it by buying something that doesn’t work.
If your product is shit your company does not deserve to be shielded from the backlash, this is the core of (classic) capitalism after all.
I saw a comment on a Patreon that someone got a free copy of…one of those dime a dozen boom shoots for his YouTube channel. He has about 500-1000 subs, and he’s getting a video game. He definitely didn’t like it, and was having to reconcile if he wanted to give it an honest review or tell the PR firm that the product wasn’t good. I feel like this push and pull is way too common.