That’s true in many cases; the drive to produce clickbait to get readers is definitely a thing.
But I’m more referring to a sort of new honor of flatly lying to the press (and in every which way) and then later going, “Oh yeah that? Just kidding!” When all you have to work with is anecdotal, there’s not much a journalist could do, except to start putting those kinds of articles under a new “Gossip” section. [which I think we need to clarify better for readers]
I’ve seen more of that over the past couple of years than ever before.
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