"People like you"? Dem's fightin' words, son on a serious note, though, what doth thou mean?
Folks that would react the way you did to the article, mostly
Cry bullshit and let loose the dogs of "Look at this Stupidity!", for your howling puppetmasters behind the print have profit to reap
I was highlighting BS journalism ie they made shit up. In the short-term folk might click the link, but in the longer term (sensible) folk will realize they talk nonsense and look for better sources.
See, the thing you're perhaps underestimating here is that many of those sensible folk will eventually forget they were ignoring the source in question, and once again spread the source around. More than that, there's a constantly shifting body of people who are involving themselves with paying attention; the news reporter may lose older viewers, but there's always going to be new ones coming in unawares. The short term is always now, and the long term is only many hours of now away.
Though even then, it may not
necessarily lose them older viewers -- there's a number of people out there that get hooked in by articles like that, spread by word of mouth as you did, and then stick around for
other subjects the source reports on that actually match their consideration of sensible, that they notice when drawn in by schlock (not that I'm saying that article is or isn't schlock, as I haven't read it and have no intention of doing so :V). You underestimate the flytrap
It's not a good strategy to rely on
solely, but it's definitely something entertainment news regularly uses to supplement its numbers.