This has been a thing for many, many years (my guess is, since 5 minutes after journalism was invented). See "yellow journalism" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_propaganda_of_the_Spa...).

"Fast forward" from a statement last week to this week doesn't seem like much time for anything to have changed.

I'm also not sure anyone really expects high journalistic standards from tabloids. This kind of junk 'reporting' has been in Britain since the 1700s.

Journalist as activist is the whole point of a free press and the Fourth Estate. Just ask Emile Zola.

It's kind of different from activist journalism. "Vendetta journalism" is more "I have a personally grudge against person X, so let's hound this person to settle the score". A lot of times this all revolves around incredibly petty and childish bickering.

more like activists are increasingly engaged as journalists.

This is the Daily Mirror, who has been doing exactly this for decades. This kind of "activist" behavior is called "tabloid journalism" because of the tabloid format in which the Daily Mirror is printed.

(Along with a few others. I don't know why the half-broadsheet format seems especially popular with such disreputably tactics. But regardless, this is absolutely nothing new for the Daily Mirror and its ilk.)