I think it is best to take a wholesale view that the news as we know it is a religion. That sounds a bit odd given that a lot that is in the news is fact oriented and a lot of current affairs is discussed. But in a formal church there is mention and prayers for those caught up in actual events.
Fundamentally though the news requires belief. It is there for the 'capitalist flock' who have a world where the government, democracy as we know it and the laws we have define the world.
With normal religion the real things that happen with celestial bodies get interpreted in some narrative that has to do with some carpenter's son who died a long time ago. A whole new world of god is created which is an abstraction of physical realities. Rather than 'primitive sun worshipping' there is this new religion to believe in, the religion accounts for everything in its own special way.
If you could teleport 500 years into the future and learned about TV news and how people believed it then you would wonder how people disbelieved facts they observed with their own eyes and what they knew to be true by the calling of their own heart and their own sense of reason.
Therefore, at least as a thought experiment, see the news and the nasty things said about people outside capitalist countries as 'religion'. It all becomes clearer then.