Who said they were false? Click bait is rarely false just misleading.

My local news runs a promo every night that they have some super important message that you need to hear "what you could be doing wrong with kids". When they finally share it's something like 'yoga is good for your health'.

Journalism is a business. All news orgs are judged by selling papers to driving clicks.

Seeing a few people saying something means a few people said something. Assuming it applies to all and skepticism sets in.