And yep, www.abc.net.au/news is exactly one of the sites I was thinking of. I notice their app makes many calls to firebaselogging-pa.googleapis.com and similar. Sending who knows what.
Moving to the web version I’m hoping can blunt such things. On iOS I use AdGuard, Hush, and StopTheMadness. d3ward.github.io/toolz/adblock.html tells me I’m not doing too bad in terms of ads and tracking.
Two others which are pretty bad with their apps but have very similar webpages: