Some terminal emulators – e.g., kitty – can show images inline. I use `toot` and `tooi` to read the Fediverse in kitty, and the images are there alright.
You don't need to stay completely in the terminal interface. I use newsboat. I have configured it such that if I want to open any media links like that, one keystroke opens them in a new firefox window on top of everything. One can also use something like mpv or imagemagick if firefox feels too "heavy."
I wish more sites added images (in the <enclosure> tag preferably) to their RSS posts. I think images are the perfect middle ground between spicing up pure textbased posts and not being distracting videos on autoplay.
With my self-built reader (link in bio) I'm always delighted to see posts with photos or images attached.
Plug: I made https://github.com/ratatui/ratatui-image for ratatui projects (like this one), and terminals that support some image protocol. It falls back to some ASCII-art.
I tried to use neomutt a few months ago, and found that all email is now just a mime encoded minefield. too bad, I liked the mutt workflow over having to have a browser opening and checking for stuff.
Alas, a terminal interface is a decisively bad choice for that.
With my self-built reader (link in bio) I'm always delighted to see posts with photos or images attached.
Nobody is going to be able to find this by name when you have such a generic one.
Please consider using Trolley to package this for non-technical users:
https://github.com/weedonandscott/trolley