And it does not even have to be malice: a simple misunderstanding will do. After 20 years of the Daily Show/Colbert/the Internet people are more primed than ever to notice a "problematic" look, comment or action. As you said, it gives people a rush.
Reminds me of this comment on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11104428 The poster does not know Fry, the award winner or their relationship but the first thing that comes to mind is shock: How could he say such a thing when we can interpret it in the worst possible way.
Lots of TV news programs are attempting to curate your opinion based on carefully cherry picked nuggets of information. Nancy Grace, Rachel Maddow, Bill O'Reilly (used to be at least), et al. The 'show clip -> explain outrage' is a news trope that won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe we should focus on the individual merits of these shows instead of unilaterally deciding that they are a general cause of some aspect of society that you may think is problematic.