It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking the media only covers the bad news, the ugly stories, the dirty laundry. I think the coverage is just more ubiquitous and exhausting than ever before, so it’s always going to seem like the bad stuff is overblown.
If you go to the library and pull up old newspapers on microfiche (wait, does that even exist anymore?) you will see that all the big papers covered the heck out of bad stories. The problem today is there are so many more outlets and 24-hour cable has a lot of time to fill so you have different hosts and shows hammering the same stories.