I have become so hyper aware of the word count filler in articles over the years that its become difficult to even read most of this slop.

They PAYWALLED this information. Let that sink in. 43 words had value and didn't even say what the headline said, and people are paying for the privilege of reading this!

I feel like the whole link aggregator model of social media has conditioned people into only reading headlines and also conditioned media outlets to worry most about headlines. This has always been true to some degree but in the era of the internet you can give the headline away for free and it'll be read a million times before the body text is read at all. That's if you can read the body text, and it isn't just paywalled. In which case, all you get is pure propaganda.