From their perspective, whether it is bait or not, they only benefit from commenting on it. People buy into their news media if it either asserts what they already believe to be true or outlines something outrageous.

This news coverage is just the beginning, but it'll probably fizzle out because it's a lose-lose for news media. It has also been started in public and is easily debunk-able.

They know it's a bait. It's written in most of the articles itself. But they can't help the urge to virtue signal. See "it's okay to be white"

The most brilliant counter to this I've seen is replacing the "it's ok to be white" paper that was removed with a blank piece of paper. Hopefully, once seeing blank paper is sending people to the campus police, this can all come to a truly ridiculous end.