If a user can interact off-chain (lightning) thousands of times without ever touching on-chain...

That is by-definition scaling. Does it scale 'infinitely'? No.

But remember right now where we're at - Bloomberg the WSJ the Financial Times and most media outlets have no idea Lightning even exists. They have never made a Bitcoin transaction or even held their own keys. Not once.

They have literally never used Bitcoin...

So they don't have really any informed opinion on it. This will take time but it will change eventually and when they do they will come to Lightning in some format.