I really don't think a local news website from Spokane Washington can be expected to place international laws as a high priority. Even if they already practice

I really don't think a local news website from Spokane Washington can be expected to place international laws as a high priority. Even if they already practiced correct usage of people's data (unlikely) having someone on-staff that understands those laws enough to communicate the requirements to whoever is developing & hosting their IT infrastructure just to get confirmation of compliance is enough of an economic deterrent to make the landing page you see seem like a more reasonable solution.