I wouldn't call it a 'campaign' as such, very often editors are sent 'pieces' to cover in their area - an idea for a story that is sent to all regional outlets to tailor to their area and publish. It's an easy piece to do, as it takes 2 minutes to research on AW or VS and then ask police for a (generic) statement.
It's just crap and lazy journalism of the 21st century. Dave Gorman does a wonderful piece about it in one of his 'Modern Life is Goodish' episodes where he showed 10+ 'local' news services repeatedly covered 'dogging' because it was a clickbait kind of subject, and often had the exact same text with [insert your area's name here] even left in one of the printed pieces...