On Monday, both CNN and Fox News mentioned the caravan more than 80 times. On Tuesday, more than 40. On Wednesday and Thursday, the subject was raised fewer than 80 times across CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and Fox Business combined.

The caravan still exists, in several parts. Having reached Mexico City — still hundreds of miles from the U.S. border — many caravan participants paused for several days, but the procession voted Thursday night to begin walking again Friday morning.

AD

AD

Why did caravan coverage drop off? One reason, certainly, is that there’s been a glut of other news: the midterm elections results, the resignation of former attorney general Jeff Sessions, Trump’s interactions with the press. More pressing news didn’t curtail Fox News and Fox Business from consistently talking about the migrants. In late October, the arrest of a suspect in a series of attempted mail bombings and the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh prompted CNN and MSNBC to taper off discussion of the caravan. The Foxes didn’t.

So why’d that coverage decline? The caravan was framed by President Trump specifically as a campaign issue in multiple speeches. While his administration Thursday announced a change in policy aimed at stemming the number of caravan participants who could apply for asylum upon reaching the U.S., the caravan itself still didn’t earn much of a place in the conversation, even on Fox News and Fox Business.

We’ve seen this pattern before, a subject that rose to prominence in the last few weeks of a campaign that then dropped off the radar.

In 2016, it was FBI Director James B. Comey’s announcement of the discovery of new emails related to Hillary Clinton.

In 2014, it was the Ebola crisis (something that was a staple of President Trump’s tweeting at the time).

Both Comey and Ebola became central parts of the political debate as the elections came to an end. But each of those examples differs from the caravan coverage in one important way: The stories had largely concluded by Election Day. Comey’s supplementary investigation wrapped up before the campaign ended. A series of cases of Ebola in the United States were successfully treated or contained days before the election ended. In other words, there wasn’t as much reason to keep talking about the subjects, even if there weren’t competing news.

AD

AD