"Yes, I think this is driven by corporate friendly mainstream media to mostly drum up for support for more corporate welfare while simultaneously painting Americans as lazy and undeserving of welfare themselves."

I think you are overindexing on the corporate-media outlet connection and ignoring how simple it is for a journalist to write a trend piece from personal anecdotes. All it takes is three friends of a journalist to resign before said journalist feels like this is a 'nationwide trend'.