You're not wrong, but the scope isn't limited to traditional news. The power of mass media (including social media) plus the ratings/profit-motive led us to expect entertainment at all times, and it's been a long time coming. Back in the '60s JFK's FCC Chairman gave his "vast wasteland" speech, which still rings true:

> When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better.

> But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there, for a day, without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

> You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling, and offending. And most of all, boredom. True, you’ll see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be very, very few. And if you think I exaggerate, I only ask you to try it.

An article I enjoyed about this topic can be found here (non-paywalled): https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theatlantic.com%2F...

Traditional news invented it. "More on this amazing story after these messages" - everything was formatted to keep you around through the next commercial break. The internet didn't have to do that since you were seeing ads inline, so the news was more useful. But then the internet realized if you sensationalize... etc etc.

> what you're writing doesn't even have to have any fact, it can be all opinion, and in most cases this can afford you even more leeway to be inflammatory.

Sounds like it could be automated pretty well with ChatGPT.