hi doma,
these stories and scripts are provided by ap and reuters to local news teams. it's a feature of constrained local budgets.
this isn't mind control. it's the way retail supply chains work with central distribution to remote clients and from those clients to consumers. except in this case, the thing being distributed is content.
from a local news perspective, it's cheap fluff to fill a dull news show. they add the news reader that local people know to mouth the words. which all helps with the flow of advertising income.
dull rather than sinister.