I think more than anything its down to a shift in how news is produced and distributed. It's cheaper to lift stuff from local papers (where a man drowning could be genuinely newsworthy) and social media, plus it can be be done from the office by an intern working for peanuts, so thats what gets produced. So human interest stories or "it could happen to me" tragedies get precedence over lengthy investigative pieces not necessarily because we're all secretly craving snuff videos and upskirt shots of young girls at the beach but because people who make it can do so quickly and in great quantity. Then catch22 comes in because they use the volume as proof that there's demand.
Obviously that's only a small part of it, and I pretty much agree with you overall in that people need to switch off or source better information for themselves. Then again the falling numbers of newspaper sales year on year seem to suggest it's happening. Maybe in a few years I'll be able to switch on Midlands Today and actually hear about the new Bill that got passed and actually affects me rather than hearing about Sharon's pet ******* goat and it's big dreams of breaking into the entertainment industry.
Dare to dream!