Professional journalism has always had this problem to a degree; there's always been an advertiser or other funding source you don't want to piss off. Twitter just exacerbates this by rewarding the most sensational, attention-grabbing posts.
Editors writing clickbait headlines have been guilty of this for so, SO long. And it has gotten worse over time, even as the actual articles are increasingly behind paywalls. Complain about headlines which have almost no bearing on anything that could be called truth, and you’ll be accused of not reading the article… as if that’d get the headline-writers off the hook.
If you've noticed a lot more paywalls going up it's because the era of clickbait is actually dying. Serious newsrooms have always hated it and shriveling ad revenue has finally tipped back towards subscriptions being the most viable path to profit. Content farms and their SEO game is far less valuable than it used to be.
