The fault is in the interaction between media and the audience. People tend to react better to some content than to another, which leads to that content making more money, which leads to more of such content. The process is optimizing for exploiting cognitive biases and heuristics the audience uses.
Now the question is - what's easier to tackle? Issues with brain architecture that would require medical interventions we barely can imagine to correct, or business incentives of the media companies?
Corporate incentives are built around converting avarice into societal progress and a are incentivized to find the shortest path to that profit.
It's probably easier to make laws for one of those scenarios though.
I don't see how you can turn that into a "brain architecture" issue.
Shareholders are driven by the same dopamine system that normal people are, and are unlikely to sit by and change their incentives for the sake of morals.
The people pushing journalists to drop long form, in favor of revenue and attention generating articles with lower costs are shareholders, correctly responding to clear market incentives.
Theres an excellent article from mother jones which provides a possible solution to this problem (its been shared on HN but there was no discussion when I found it) http://www.motherjones.com/media/2016/08/whats-missing-from-...
That said, one could make the argument that it's not the media's fault that in any given month, a photogenic (and perhaps blonde) woman has been kidnapped or murdered. However, it is the media's fault when they saturate the airwaves and print with such incidents at the detriment of other news and information, even if readers gobble it up.
On the other hand, that professional behavior has a difficult time competing with unprofessional behavior is unsurprising, as is that professional behavior is hard to maintain.
But it is also true opinion polls show journalists are trusted only about as much as estate agents. And rightly so.
Media professionals sometimes see themselves as noble experts standing outside the internet echo chambers, and able to judiciously filter info-cacaphony to the benefit of the public.
They aren't.
OTOH, to the extent that journalists view themselves in this light, it helps them enforce and maintain some sort of standard for themselves.
We live in an era where diversity of media sources have exploded. Media companies compete fiercely with one another for clicks, readers, and ad revenue.
Perhaps the root problem is the media behaves the way it does because its consumers and the structure of the market makes it impossible for it not to.
TL;DR: click-baity and inaccurate news exists as a reflection of consumer preference