The Covington Kids story shows how social media amplified both sides of an issue.The behavior of mainstream journalists calling for the doxxing of and violence against these kids just strikes me as amazing. The groupthink involved with accepting the initial narrative is quite apparent.
What you’re describing “group consensus” is a systemic bias.
When systematic bias reaches the point where journalists completely abandon fact-checking and basic adult judgement, it's more than just "group consensus." Offering sexual favors to do things against kids? I'm sorry, but if I made something like that up, it would be purple prose. Journalists were swept up in that kind of groupthink!
A historical example of say US WWII propaganda qualifies as essentially all US news is shifted in the same direction.
Read Manufacturing Consent -- it's the same in 2019 as it was in the 1980's, we in the west just do it faster and harder with the bias, emotional words only for one side, and selective coverage. The thesis was that the west is just as bad as Pravda. In 2019, I find that Pravda was more subtle about it.
bias would mean the story did not evolve.
Bias can also mean that the retractions were either absent or all but meant to be invisible. In 2019, the typical media modus operandi is to technically be about the truth and retract, but engineer this to have basically zero effect. The number of mainstream sites who will edit a story, but give no indication of that, is just amazing to me.