You're watching the passage of this summer's "media front".
A media front is similar to a weather system warm front that sweeps across the country. Last summer, the media front was shark attacks. In the end, there were no more attacks last year than in previous years but it made for sensational headlines for most of last year.
Sometimes, the media is just plain lazy, as when they all jump on a media front (or feeding frenzy, to use a different metaphore). Rather than do the work to uncover actual news, they just parrot each others' work and try to create the ever elusive "buzz" that means increased ratings.