It is what they do. It is what their sponsors tell them to do.
They won't touch pictures of a balloon shootdown because that might look favorable to the American military forces.
In any event, the government has not finished generating pictures of those "airborne objects", so there is nothing to see yet. They have got have something that looks suitably extra-terrestrial. Balloons are too boring.
Watch the other hand of the magician. In fact, watch the entire stage crew. The balloon stories are a great distraction from the Hunter Biden corruption scandal, the release of the Epstein flight logs, and the recent assassinations of two Republican councilmen in New Jersey.
Lots of nasty things moving around in the background.
It’s funny how in the 80s and 90s the thought was the govt. knew of alien UFOs but didn’t want to disclose the truth for fear of the civilians in a mad panic. Now it seems like a 18 and they want to fake that we are dealing with possible aliens and they WANT us in a mad panic.