That's just your assumption. Don't get me wrong - it sounds plausible, but it is unlikely that such scenario would have played out. Maybe we have too many news

That's just your assumption. Don't get me wrong - it sounds plausible, but it is unlikely that such scenario would have played out. Maybe we have too many news outlets - you can even read that some employ AI already to write articles for them. They are going for quantity over quality. There are always going to be people wanting to gossip over a headline and if a news source doesn't provide much beyond that, are they actually providing anything of value? When we didn't have internet, many people would have looked at newspapers on display and discussed headlines without actually buying a newspaper. Was it a problem then?