You do have a point there. Media literacy should get a better focus during education.

However I don't think its a fair comparison. The general public cannot currently be expected to have good media literacy, as long as there is no proper public education. I'm not aware of any public schools properly teaching media literacy during the general education (I mean before college), so a good chunk of the population, if not the majority, will never even stop to consider things like what kinda assumptions they made about an article. (Just like I did before this discussion)

It is something you can expect from someone who studied journalism though.

So if the goal of the journalist was good journalism, they should plan ahead and use clear language without any room for assumptions. If they use headlines like this it just seems like clickbait to me.

The ambiguity of what exactly is meant by 'nightmare'. It intentionally leaves it up to the readers interpretation what could be meant, and because of the harshness of the used word, the reader immediately thinks of the worst possible outcome - an infestation of your own home.