The long-awaited sequel to The Ebola Panic (2014) has hit theaters just in time for the homestretch of the 2018 midterms. The Caravan is the haunting tale of how thousands of Central American people left their homes, primarily in Honduras, and are currently walking through southern Mexico, a thousand miles from the United States border. Yes, did you know the caravan you're seeing wall-to-wall coverage on was actually still in Huixtla, Mexico, on Tuesday—a city very near the southern tip of Mexico?

That probably wasn't readily apparent from the front-page coverage afforded it by The New York Times for yet another day:

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Now two days in a row. Happening all over again. pic.twitter.com/r1RYRnbF0n — Mark Copelovitch (@mcopelov) October 23, 2018

Never mind that The Caravan is incredibly far away, and that surely only some slice of the few thousand marching in it will make it to the U.S.-Mexico border, and that many will likely apply for an asylum hearing—a legal right under international law and treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory—based on the claim they are fleeing gang and domestic violence in their home countries. Never mind that only the tiniest percentage are likely to gain entrance to America.

The fact that this is getting exhaustive coverage is just the latest failure in a campaign homestretch from the Mainstream Media in this country, following a 2016 meltdown over Hillary Clinton's email security protocol and a 2014 cycle where the media went apocalyptic over an Ebola outbreak in southern Africa. Both were hysterias ginned up by Republicans and their allied propagandists in the sprawling right-wing media ecosystem. Both were covered to death throughout the rest of the media until the day after Election Day, at which point, Matthew Yglesias at Vox reminds us, they essentially dropped off the map:

As this 2014 report from Rob Savillo and Matt Gertz shows, Ebola coverage was widespread on both cable and network news, with over 1,000 segments airing in the four weeks before the election. Coverage then immediately plummeted when it no longer served the tactical interests of the Republican Party, with just 50 segments airing over the two post-election weeks.

This is all part of what Yglesias calls "the hack gap," where conservatives can successfully set the agenda for the entire media by performing outrage and alarm on issues they believe will be damaging to Democrats, or that will get The Base out to vote. President Trump, for instance, cooked up an outrageous lie about how "unknown Middle Easterners" were embedded in The Caravan this week—and was at first rewarded with uncritical headlines in the mainstream press. It took a day or two for reporters to nail Trump down on the falsehood, at which point the damage was likely done. The press, it appears, has learned little from the last few years, and is struggling to adapt to an era of complete bad-faith politics.

JOHAN ORDONEZ Getty Images

Yglesias honed in on the logic the press uses to absolve itself of blame for this kind of coverage, using the Clinton email "scandal"—which got more coverage during the 2016 campaign than ALL POLICY ISSUES COMBINED—as a case study:

The essence of the Clinton email scandal wasn’t the claim that she’d done something wrong — everyone, including Clinton herself, agreed that it was inappropriate to violate State Department email policy and that she should not have done that. The essence was, rather, the bizarre and obviously false claim that the Clinton email scandal was important.

The argument around this score became in most respects circular. As a CNN explainer on the controversy concluded, the scandal mattered politically because “among Clinton’s biggest challenges in the presidential race is demonstrating her authenticity — and part of that is showing voters she’s trustworthy. Increasingly, though, voters say they distrust Clinton. The numbers have shifted dramatically since news of her private email server was first reported in March.”

As if on cue, the Times presented this on Wednesday morning:

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The migrant caravan: Republicans won't stop talking about it, and Democrats are trying not to https://t.co/XfbpLT6F7T — The New York Times (@nytimes) October 24, 2018

This does not actually speak to why the issue is important. It's an admission that it's treated as important because Republicans keep screaming about it as if it were important. The Times goes on to say The Caravan is "creating a political firestorm less than two weeks before Election Day," as if this firestorm just emerges organically from the ether—without, say, getting constant coverage from The Paper of Record. The issue is getting attention, so it's important. But who's giving it attention? Shut up. It's important.

The Times rewarded the Republican hysteria-mongering with those front-page stories. Yet next to one of the stories, there's another Times story essentially admitting that it's a scam: "Trump Escalates Use of Migrants as Election Ploy." So why, exactly, is this on the front page day after day? If you know it's a brazen political ploy—which, by the way, appeals explicitly to racism and xenophobia and fear using lies—why do you aid and abet the propaganda effort simultaneously? Why is CNN covering it constantly, even if Brian Stelter proudly explains some coverage features a map showing just how far away the caravan is from this country? It's not that it shouldn't be covered at all, or that outlets aren't covering anything else. It's just mindlessly treated as The Most Important Thing Right Now.

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It doesn't need this much coverage. It's not that big a deal. Many of those in the traveling party will not make it to the border. The vast majority that make it will likely be turned away. Some journalists covering things on the ground suggest most of the people in the group will end up staying in Mexico. All of this will probably happen weeks from now. There is no justification, grounded in the facts or based on the timing of the caravan's arrival relative to Election Day, to paper the walls with this dross in the run-up to perhaps the most important midterm election in modern history. What is the argument that this is anything more than a regional story, besides that Republicans are crafting propaganda out of it?

In the meantime, we could discuss, say:

This is not an exhaustive list. We got an egregious example of that last phenomenon this morning, with an umpteenth Bald-Faced Lie Tweet from the president:

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Republicans will totally protect people with Pre-Existing Conditions, Democrats will not! Vote Republican. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2018

These are just some examples of the issues that will actually impact Americans' lives over the next two years, far more than The Caravan or, once upon a time, Ebola. It is high time the mainstream press came to grips with this era of bad faith. A disdain for the truth and a disregard for consistency are hallmarks of the kind of nationalist movement Trump now proudly declares he's leading. He and his allies should not be permitted to set the agenda because they scream the loudest, and will lie in the most egregious terms, about the looming threat of brown people marching towards the U.S. border.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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