Donahue though wasn't a news program though. It was daytime garbage programming. These were small parts of TV programming.
What I remember is how I didn't like the actual news after the local news because of how boring it was. It was actually a news program.
I also grew up watching ESPN sports center. There was never any outrage at that time. It was just showing highlights of games with minimal added commentary. The internet then destroyed all these business models and turned everything into a tabloid.
Growing up I can remember at the grocery store when checking out there was always a tabloid newspaper that every other week would have on the cover how Elvis faked his own death or something just ridiculous.
To me we don't even consider the actual worse case scenario.
Is there any doubt 50 years from now all this will be on algorithmic autopilot for digital authoritarianism? All societies will have Chinese style monitoring but to an unimaginable degree even to people in China right now.
People outside IT were barely even using the internet 25 years ago. We are at the very start of this and already too far gone. You just have to enjoy these times and what we still have.