I was a professional photogrammetrist for 5 years, and still have the occasional need to play with stereo imagery, and I can report that vertical exaggeration is very commonly employed, although necessarily not for PR or sensationalist reasons. It is simply easier to see relief that way, and geologists prefer it because it tends to highlight structures and geomorphology and makes them easier to study. It is especially useful for seeing ground contours in relatively flat terrain. If you've ever seen real scale models of earth terrain, the earth and it's landforms actually are a lot flatter than they look.

There is also a psychological component at work. The human visual processing system tends to exaggerate the vertical over the horizontal dimensions, probably an evolutionary throwback to give us a healthy fear of heights. Lay ten feet out on the ground, or look up at a ten foot ceiling, and it's not that far. Climb up on a ten foot roof and look down and it appears to be a long way down!