The GDPR is really complicated. There's plenty of publicly available information you can use without explicit user consent. What's true is that many of GDPR's rules, particularly the disclosure of data sources and erasure requests, don't get an exemption just because the data is publicly available.

For example, while they can't just divulge my name & age in the news, the captions under pictures in news articles can often still have people's names & ages under them without explicit user consent. Tabloids would likely cease to exist if it were any other way. ;-)