>Is video actually easier to sensationalize than other media?
It has nothing to do with video (although the fidelity of recording likely has an impact). It's now know as the Hawthorne effect [1] but even before it was given a name, anthropologists who came to openly study remote tribes often reported markedly different cultural behaviors from more clandestine anthropologists and the locals whose contact with the remote tribes brought them to the attention of academics.
Just knowing that something is being closely observed and even recorded for posterity seems to significantly alter behavior. Basically like a possum playing dead, except with far more complex social interactions.