Tragic fires ripped through Southern California in January, only a year after they brought Maui to the same fate. President Donald Trump was almost assassinated twice. And famine in Sudan is stealing the lives of children daily, in a historically gargantuan hunger crisis. 

What do these major events have in common? Apparently, they're all forgettable – at least sort of. Coverage of each began with a frenzy of national and global attention. And crises and questions remain with each, but the media attention does not. At best, it’s been relegated to the messily overflowing sidebars of car crashes and UFO sightings. 

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Are journalists lacking bandwidth or ambition in a disordered news cycle? Are they getting lazy, or is bias just overtly overshadowing story choices? Or could it be the public’s fault – that degenerative attention spans have stopped allowing for continued interest in the world’s most momentous affairs?

Like many of the stories mainstream media has buried in latency over the years, the reality of those answers is complicated. 

Here are five reasons why major stories fall out of the mainstream media’s view.

#1: Train Wreck Effect

While it’s objectively impossible to truly keep up with the 24-hour news cycle, there’s evidence to support why some stories seem to lose their luster so quickly. 

Have you ever been driving and become so distracted by a bad car wreck that you almost crashed your own car? Or have you ever struggled to look away from a couple in a coffee shop that you just knew were fighting? That’s the train wreck effect – you see something sensational, you look. It’s how train wrecks work; it’s how clickbait works; and it’s how news works – some of the time, at least. As the saying goes: “If it bleeds, it leads.”

According to clinical psychologist Dr. John Mayer, the effect “acts as a preventive mechanism to give us information on the dangers to avoid and to flee from.” So, when safety is no longer of immediate concern, it’s not likely that the “train” will remain all that interesting. 

The Russia-Ukraine War was a hot topic in the news media and arguably the most widely and in-depth covered foreign affairs story for nearly two years – that is, until October 2023, when the Israel-Hamas War broke out, and all eyes turned to Gaza. The shock value that came with the reignition of an ancient conflict made people want to learn more and – at the very least – form opinions. Discussions of a potential World War III will inevitably turn heads. 

The tragedies of those wars haven’t ceased, and the lines haven’t shifted much. But to a large extent, news coverage has. In 2023, AllSides published thirteen longform pieces on Ukraine. In 2024, it published four. (It is notable, however, that AllSides generally analyzes what is already prolific in the news media.) Since then, the focus in media has shifted back to Ukraine from Gaza. Not three months into 2025, AllSides has already published three more pieces on Ukraine. 

As time passes in war, both media attention and readers’ feelings may become less intense. But it’s hard to say which comes first.

#2: Bandwidth and Audience Interest

Bandwidth acts in tandem with the train wreck effect, resulting in the most shocking, fresh, and often controversial stories taking priority over the long-running effort to fix your town’s potholes, for example. And, as good as AI has gotten, it’s not limitless nor flawless, and it can’t ethically replace human journalism. Thus, news outlets are simply incapable of covering every relevant story that comes around. 

Bandwidth in media is an obvious component of lessening media coverage, but so is the audience’s interest. If the same topic is exhausted day after day with similar information, only near-fanatics will continue to stay tuned. In this sense, it doesn’t matter if that similar information is about the stock market or an act of genocide: people will often lose interest.

Additionally, every time new details of a story break, journalists have to explain context; and even if readers have the bandwidth to do so, a headline about an event they don’t yet understand will oftentimes come across like white noise and lead to reader drop-off. Journalists know this. 

Coverage of the wildfires in Los Angeles is an example of both a bandwidth and audience interest issue. When news first broke that Los Angeles was burning, folks across the globe were tuning in to learn more. Outrage over the chaos within state and local departments, serious questions about potential arson, and bittersweet moments of loved ones being reunited were rampant in both news and social media. That is, until they weren’t. 

While flames remained ablaze, the fire that had been lit underneath the public had been smothered. People had been reading a similar story day after day, and new details would eventually become hard to follow. As crass as it sounds, even train wrecks can get boring. 

On top of that, inaugural proceedings for Donald Trump had begun. So, while the fires continued, many newsrooms turned to instead write about Carrie Underwood’s inauguration performance or Melania Trump’s hat.

#3: Story Choice

At some point, journalists must use subjective judgement when choosing stories. And whether they’re for a small town gazette or a global media network, certain stories will end up with less or no coverage. 

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The Ipsos “Interactive Care-o-Meter” tracks which stories Americans know and care about most. Some of the highest ranking (both known and cared about) include the 2024 presidential election and its major events; the LA, Maui, and Canadian wildfires; hurricanes Helene and Milton; the Baltimore Bridge collapse; and the Israel-Hamas War. Those stories obviously don’t have a whole lot in common, but they all consist of one or both of the following: the train wreck effect and immediate personal impact. 

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) blocking US military promotions and appointments in 2023 is a story of objective significance, but it doesn’t exhibit shock value, and it doesn’t affect a large population in an immediate and personal way, as is shown in the “Care-o-Meter.” The same goes for the European Central Bank cutting interest rates in September, Rupert Murdoch stepping down as head of Fox and News Corp. in 2023, and Hunter Biden agreeing to plead guilty to federal tax fraud charges. Even Peanut the Squirrel’s euthanization got more attention than those last two.

Today, the country of Sudan is starving through a famine crisis and civil war that began in 2023. It has reportedly taken “from 20,000 up to 150,000” lives and counting. Conversely, the death toll in Gaza is currently about 50,000. Both are stories that are foreign to the US, yet Gaza has gotten far more attention. 

Most people in the global West don’t have immediate connections to either group of people, but they do have social connections – something to rally for. They often see injustices in Gaza as something perpetrated by a larger entity in one way or another. With Sudan, it’s less easy to place blame; thus, less alluring. 

Unsurprisingly, story choices can also be quite biased. 

Story choice is something that is inevitable in news media; but, whether it’s a matter of human interest or editorial bias, it plays a huge role in worldviews and political perceptions. If done poorly, readers may be swept into harmful filter bubbles and – to put it bluntly – utter ignorance to reality.

#4: Algorithmic Bias

Story choice isn’t the only catalyst for content bias. Extensive audits conducted by AllSides (2018-2023) found Google News to have a Lean Left bias. A 2023 audit found that 63% of Google News’ curated articles were rated by AllSides as Lean Left or Left. This, along with the biases of every other news curator and major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, makes bias effectively impossible to avoid. All three search engines featured significantly more outlets rated Left or Lean Left by AllSides than outlets rated Right or Lean Right.

Meanwhile, studies suggest that X’s algorithm tends to favor content from the right, just as Google tends to favor content from the left. As a result, many individuals will gravitate towards the curator with the most politically-aligned content, thus trapping themselves in a filter bubble. The algorithms often recognize this and continue to distribute the content that will grant the most engagement and evoke the most emotion. 

It is for that reason that CNN (Lean Left) hosts a piece called, “Trump realities drive migrants to reroute their American Dream” and Fox News (Right) hosts one called, “I’m an immigrant and I’ve done the math. Here’s how to fix our immigration system.”

In many cases, it’s not that the media stopped covering it, but rather that it fell out of some sort of subjective and flawed political alignment.

#5: Pop Culture Value

Hypothetically, it is more likely that news of Elon Musk misfiring his own gun in his own home and injuring no one (which hasn’t happened) would gain widespread media coverage than a mid-to-mass shooting leaving four dead in Chicago (which happens regularly). That is the culture that we live in. 

Within 24 hours of Luigi Mangione’s alleged assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, anyone with access to the internet could passively learn details, down to the words of his alleged public manifesto. His hatred of insurance companies and personal health struggles resonated with many people. 

Yet, the two men who attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump during his campaign remain enigmas. It is notable that the first assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, did not reportedly have a large social media presence, but the second, Ryan Wesley Routh, did. 

While pictures of Mangione remain rampant on social media, Routh’s attention is quiet and mundane. Routh’s trial for attempting to kill Trump was supposed to begin in February 2025, but it was pushed to September. That delay and what led up to it received no significant media attention. Non-establishment circles have delved extensively into Crooks’ purported ties to Blackrock (he appeared briefly in a BlackRock commercial in 2022) and Routh’s ties to the Ukrainian military, but mainstream media seemingly buried those leads.

Another contrast between Mangione and the Trump assassins is their appearances. As superficial and genuinely atrocious as it is to argue: Mangione is widely seen as more physically attractive than the other two, and has been the focus of social media fanfare on that basis. No one was making fan edits on TikTok of the others. 

Pop culture and what is seen as either unusual or attractive most often wins in every facet of mainstream and social media. The term “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” as coined by journalist Gwen Ifill, points to the media’s repetitive fixation on missing white women over people of color and men. While connotations of racism are subjective, Missing White Women Syndrome is a statistically significant phenomenon that points to a correlation of culture and content. The reality is that people of color are disproportionately missing persons in the US. But many media outlets seem to think their individual stories are less worth covering. 

Value and Virtue

The reason why mainstream media stopped covering a certain story probably isn’t some sort of high-level conspiracy, cover-up or calculation. It is more likely a mixed bag consisting of newsroom debates, subjective story choice biases, algorithmic manifestations, and the ever-present truth that “if it bleeds, it leads –” for better or worse.

But news consumers must realize that story choice is their responsibility as well. Google Trends data reveals US search interest (on a scale of 1-100) for the term “LA fires” peaked at 100 on January 9 but was at a 1 less than 30 days later. “Maui fires” peaked once as well but otherwise shared a similar fate. For the term “Sudan famine,” the search interest level is currently 0 relative to its previous peak. The media is not providing information in the best or, arguably, most ethical way, but consumers are also not seeking the information that they should.

Choosing to read diverse perspectives, rather than relying on media-illiterate sources and algorithms, is undisputedly vital. Just because the media stops covering it doesn’t mean you should stop paying attention. 

Malayna J. Bizier is a News Analyst and Social Media Editor at AllSides. She has a Right bias. 

This piece was reviewed and edited by Henry A. Brechter, Editor-in-chief (Center); Emily Allen, News Curator (Left); Andy Gorel, News and Social Media Editor (Center); Julie Mastrine, Director of Marketing and Media Bias Ratings (Lean Right); and Clare Ashcraft, Bridging Coordinator and Media Analyst (Center).

Photo Credit: CC Thomas8047 via Flickr