What I noticed during the Clinton/Lewinsky/Impeachment debacle was how the media uses it as a distraction.
There were important things happening that were ignored or barely mentioned while the media focused on Clinton’s so called “approval” ratings, and discussions that his affair wasn’t an impeachable offense-deliberate misleading obsfucation.
Meanwhile all manner of things betraying our country were happening that helped the Chinese for example. Same today, sex scandals are being used as a distraction from the real important news. JMHO.
I think the idea that the media uses “distractions” is an unrealistic way of looking at what we see, or perhaps, I am simply misinterpreting what you are saying.
When the media do not want the people to see something, they simply ignore it. When they do that, everything else they bring up can be classified as a “distraction” but it really isn’t.
The establishment media do not need a specific distraction, because they do not have any reason to expose anything that detracts from their agenda.
It used to be that ignoring a subject kept it out of the public mind. That is not working so well any more.