The Romans used bread and games to entertain the masses. Looks to me that this has been fine tuned for the past 2,000 years, only now we call it takeaway and surfing the net.
It's more than that, I'm afraid. After all, conflicts that always seem to be perfect to capture the attention of the masses, amazingly timed just well enough that other systemic issues get swept under its rug, well...
Let's just say that it seems exciting problems appear to happen right as things like incredibly controversial bills are passed in an afternoon.
It's tricky to talk about hardly anything in a forum where you can't say "it's more than that."
When it comes to food, a growing portion of humans are hungry or headed toward hunger. It's not the only concern, water, food, shelter, all the basic Maslow's necessities are getting harder to come by. Harder each month. There's plenty of other concerns: corporate, government, education, and even scientific corruption, greedy billionaires; which are each and together still only part of the problem. The problems aresystemic, and that right there is why you can't talk about any one thing without recognizing there's so much more. Calling it "tinfoily" is dismissing how immediately vital food prices and availability are, even while there are many other important issues. And the way the media selects and times articles is another one of those.