We will now focus obsessively on something dumb

I've actually been inchoately wondering whether there's a term for this. This could be one:

Every time he publishes a new mess, it gets the full Pastor Jones treatment in the respectable press.

(Source: an article in Slate.) This seemed sort of Whorfian to me, inasmuch as we could crystalize the concept by coming up with a word for it. It sure does seem like we need a handy way to refer to these periodic episodes of press insanity, where 30 people in some state somewhere all of a sudden are headline news around the world. It would be best, of course, if the term were apolitical -- think of Balloon Boy.

Or is there already such a term?