This reminds me of shark attacks. There was one summer a few years ago when it seemed like they were reporting one shark attack per week. It wasn’t that sharks had suddenly decided humans are tasty & begun going on a rampage, but you couldn’t turn the TV on without hearing another news teaser about it. The topic had caught public’s eye, so the media was scouring the globe for more attacks to feed the frenzy. There may some other reasons here as well, but I’m still reminded of the summer of shark attacks.
I recall when the enviros used to say there was no recorded attack of a human by a shark in the 80s. May have been a reaction to the release of Jaws in ‘75. And then we started getting shark attack reports frequently after that.
Ah, yes, the so-called "Summer of the Shark" in 2001. It was pushed out of the daily news cycle by 9/11.