You are giving way too much credit to the average headline. Most headlines are wrong/misleading, full stop. They have incentive to be, this isn't a secret.

The "quality" headlines aren't the one the average person is reading. It's even worse in climate discussions. Fuck "An Inconvenient Truth" was probably the largest exposure to climate issues for my generation and is STILL a problem because a some claims were made that, oops, even then were called vast exaggerations by the IPCCS. No snow on Fuji within a decade comes to mind, which basically nothing but the most extreme models predicted. Well it's a decade later and to the layman, there's still snow on the mountain. It's at some of it's worst levels EVER, but when you make bold and verifiable claims and then go "oh well you see actually..." you lose people.

Even worse are the "THIS TERRIBLE THING WILL HAPPEN!...in 100 years". That's still fucking awful, but when the layman has been reading the first part for over a decade now, or ever hears the second part, it often just loses their attention entirely. Climate science trying to get real change needs to manage expectations, but media is mostly about grabbing attention. It's obvious how at odds those goals are.