Pretty much. Went to a local TV station's news page and they had eighteen stories on it. Eight were illustrated with stock photos. Something like this:
The stories were police press releases that had been copied and pasted. Five were press releases, disguised as news stories, some guy got appointed to some city position, photo was a portrait of the guy supplied with the press release, Two were social media stories, grabbed off Facebook, with the picture from Facebook. One was a story about a fire, the photo was a cell phone photo a citizen sent them. Two had actual photos where someone went out there, and they were cops standing around in a parking lot.
The beast of the internet requires feeding. Many reporters don't do anything but catch stuff that gets thrown to them and post it on the station web site. They don't have time to do anything else.
Sadly, the beach story may not have even been a deliberate attempt by a lot of the papers to disinform. They grabbed a Dem press release and got a stock photo of people on a beach.
Of course, the Dems wanted the story planted, and may have provided the photo, but "news" agencies catch stuff and print it without vetting for the majority of their stories.