I have a little insight into this (specifically through one of the media that you mentioned). It's easy to attribute this to conspiracy or planned news-creation, but this is, like so many things, an outcome of people's laziness and an environment that doesn't incentivize creativity from journalists and producers. They need to pitch articles or "news" segments, they need to pitch many, they need to pitch something that has some "social proof" (so it won't flop in the fake metrics), and they need to do this once or twice a week. What do they do? Look at their own phones and their own apps, and say, "This has been trending on a lower-tiered medium; we should cover it on our medium". The news and entertainment industries are atrophying and devolving quickly, with lower revenues, lower salaries (compared to market rates), lower head counts, and no incentive to improve because all publications are failing simultaneously.