By Rieley McDonnell, Head Copy Editor
The 24 hour news cycle introduces stories as fast as it discards them.
If the story will no longer capture the public’s attention, the mainstream news, and often independent media, will drop the story in favor of the next shiny thing. However, some stories do not deserve to be forgotten and deserve to be rerecognized.
When was the last time the news really went into the case of Kilmar Abrayo Garcia? Garcia sought asylum in the United States and was wrongfully deported to El Salvador. According to his asylum claim, El Salvador was the one country where he was unable to be deported to and yet, that is where he was sent.
Now Garcia is back in the U.S. but facing criminal charges and a potential deportation to Eswatini. I would wager most people know about how he was wrongly deported and maybe how he was brought back to the U.S. However, all the other information has not been widely told to the public.
Another story all over the news earlier this year was the formation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). DOGE was established via an executive order on the first day of the Trump administration. It was run by a former friend of the Trump Administration, Elon Musk.
The organization was tasked with getting rid of wasteful spending within the government. DOGE did this by firing many non-elected, expert government employees. For example, people working for the National Parks Service were fired because of cuts made by DOGE.
It is the strategy of the Trump Administration to keep cycling through news articles to keep questions from the public at bay.
DOGE has not been in the news much since Elon Musk got the boot from the head position of the governmental agency. The home page for DOGE, which is supposed to display its latest achievements, is blank.
In March, the Editor-in-Chief of the news organization The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, was added to a secret Slack channel by top officials within the Trump administration. This was huge breaking news when the story hit. Goldberg was privy to confidential information because of the incompetence of top officials within the Trump Administration.
All of these stories were massive headlines, but they were then dropped in favor of the new hot topic.
The question lingers as to why these stories are forgotten. In part, it is because there is always a new story everyday. If the news wants to report what is happening currently, they have to drop stories about the past, even if that past is just yesterday.
The massive influx of stories, especially in the political world, is a strategy of the Trump Administration to keep people constantly distracted. One example of how the Trump Administration tried and failed to do this is the case of the Jeffrey Epstein Files.
When Trump was on the campaign trail in 2024 for his second presidential term, he promised that he would release the Epstein files. These files are all the information about the convicted sexual predator Jeffery Epstein. Many of Trump’s supporters clung to this and were very excited to see these files released to the public.
Trump started to sing a different tune when in office. He did not want the files released because he was told by a member of his own administration that, according to the New York Times, he allegedly was in them. So, to try and distract the public from the files, the Trump administration started releasing other headlines.
Headlines about President Donald Trump’s health started appearing in the news. They told about his chronic venous insufficiency, and many Americans shifted their attention to his health. This was an attempt to distract the public from the files.
Garica’s story was forgotten in favor of headlines about DOGE. DOGE was dropped for stories about ICE. The Goldberg Atlantic story fizzled away without many consequences for those involved.
Stories are being forgotten because there is a flurry of new things to distract the public attention. It is a consequence of the 24 hour news cycle that the Trump administration takes full advantage of. I believe this is done intentionally to make people look away from headlines that the administration does not want attention on.
All that anyone can do is try to keep up with the old headlines, so that the stories are not forgotten.