To be pedantic, they aren't refusing to protect privacy, they're refusing to comply with GDPR which requires more than just protecting privacy.
It could be that they just don't want to put a big dumb banner on their site.
Why? Even logging an IP address in a request log is creating records controlled by GDPR.
When TV news in the US is broke and only gets along because large companies buy up stations to control the news, its hard to justify spending tens of thousands of dollars on complying with laws from another continent.
Untrue. IP is an category of PII but its not PII in itself unless you're a law enforcement.
Separately, if you log IP addresses you're doing it to prevent abuse and to provide security to your server, you're already permitted to do so.
More on that: https://missinfogeek.net/gdpr-consent/
I should have suspected that’d be the case.