Maybe the willingness of journalists to priotize "scoops" over the actual consequences of their reporting is exactly the problem. On some level, they seem to be incapable of thinking of non-journalists as actual, real people who deserve to be treated with decency rather than things they can use in their Very Important Work which is Vital to Democracy and then toss aside - and as you hint at, this is probably structural rather than just a failing of particular reporters.
This is true. It's not a new problem. You can watch black-and-white movies, from the 1930s, where journalists cause huge problems by publishing "scoops."
The issue is that this would apply to bloggers; even more than journalists. Bloggers chase clicks. A quick shufti at the junk that populates Clickbait Row, in any site, will show what drivel people will publish, chasing clicks.
