Can you provide an example of this? I honestly can't think of a single time when I learned something in the news that fit this description.
Public shaming has been less of an issue the past 10 years but it’s still kind of a thing.
E.g. I read the wiki entry for Trump's assassination attempt after like a week and saved myself hours of rumours and guesses.
There is an argument that the media is that bad actor, and a contributor to society's disintegration
To make a second reference, Yes, Minister has an excellent sketch over UK news papers, beautifully illustrating how each paper has carved up their own piece of the population and provide entertainment to serve those readers. It almost 40 years old and still fairly accurate description.
It not an uncommon sentiment to hear people saying that Wikipedia is a better platform for news than news organizations, since the content will stabilize fairly fast on that which everyone agrees on, and contentions over facts becomes noticeable. The general resistance to emotional loaded words also helps combat some of the worst aspects of news.
But not everyone is average, and for some of those who do invest the time in going beyond superficial headlines, the payoff is considerable in terms of power, prestige, influence, and wealth.
There is also the fact that if everyone disregarded the news, society would quickly disintegrate as bad actors leveraged people’s ignorance for the own personal ends. Thus, there is a social responsibility aspect to keeping abreast of current events.