What if it isn't a saber-toothed tiger?

There's actually something pertinent to say here about journalism's next few years, but first, enjoy the sourcing and other routines in Monday morning's lead story at the Fox homepage:

A New Jersey drone pilot says his device lost power and was forced to descend from a restricted chunk of airspace while the mystery flier he was trying to investigate managed to stay airborne despite a signal designed to shut down legal drones.

Michael B, a podcaster and paranormal investigator behind the Terror Talk Productions YouTube channel, lives near the Picatinny Arsenal, an Army facility near where dozens of sightings have been reported in recent weeks. He was flying in the area, attempting to get a closer look at a larger, unidentified object he believes is a drone.

"There was a drone just hanging out," he told FOX 5 New York. "I had full battery life. Not 3 minutes into the flight, I lost control of the drone."

Ever wonder why the national Fox operation is always well stocked with tales of episodic crime, Black People Behaving Badly and threats to the very fabric of society? One reason is that local Fox stations provide an endless supply of them.

He said he saw a warning flash across the screen of his controller and the battery died. 

... But while the restricted flight area shut down his drone, the mystery one he was trying to approach continued to fly.

It probably helps that local Fox stations don't seem to ask a lot of questions before they buy the magic beans. But here's how you can tell that Fox Central is doing real journalisms:

B did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment from Fox News Digital Monday.

And ... scene.

The Drone Mystery has led the Fox homepage at least once a day for the past six days (reminder, this is a set of four screen grabs a day of the top 10 stories). Since it first swam into our ken on Dec. 6, tensions have reached the boiling point, mysteries have swirled and Trump has Spoken Out. We've passed through the Five Stages of Fox: Americans On Edge, Republicans Demand Action, Biden Befuddled, Iranian Mothership and Grab Your Shotguns. Evidently, this has gone from being a mere story to a full-blown Issue.

Now, in the good old days, newsrooms had small cadres of people whose job -- in addition to fixing your spelling, reminding you that the Mississippi is on the other side of the state, and stopping the press for those late-breaking coups and earthquakes -- was pointing that It Isn't That Exciting. When the lead political reporter decided to proclaim that Inflation Remained at Record High, someone along the safety net would politely ask what the previous record was and how much it was broken by. Much as it is with the dreaded Reviewer 2 of the publication cycle, part of the job was asking if the data might add up to something other than the neat package handed over by officialdom. That way, should you insist on sourcing your stories to social media posts from angry Republican ex-officials:

"Last night, beginning at around 9:45 pm, I personally witnessed (and videoed) what appeared to be dozens of large drones in the sky above my residence in Davidsonville, Maryland (25 miles from our nation’s capital)," Hogan wrote on X Friday. "I observed the activity for approximately 45 minutes."

The former governor said he does not know if these drone sightings are evidence of a threat to public safety or national security, but he called out the federal government for a "complete lack of transparency" in the face of Americans' concerns.

... you reduce the risk of having to point out later that Sagittarius is usually considered a constellation, not a national security threat.

It's a safe bet that Fox has already gotten the effect it wanted from today's story and the others in the Great Drone Saga. The coverage hasn't changed what people think, but it has changed the balance of what they know. Small bits of learning can add up over time as long as they all go into the same containers: You deserve an answer. Something's going on, and you can't trust the government to tell you about it -- but you can trust Donald Trump.

The grownup media can't fix that, but they can counterflood: address the imbalance by adding to the containers on the other side. So a little less "DRONE REPORTS CONTINUE TO GO VIRAL" and a little more boredom might be in order:

• Yep, more drones are flying. Different rules are in play for using them at night, too
• A bunch of those drones are real airplanes with real people inside
• Some of them might be operated by podcasters looking for the Iranians
• You don't have to like Iran to acknowledge that, given Syria and Russia and everything else occupying their attention, it has better stuff to do than buzz Larry Hogan's backyard
• Stars are cool. Lie on your back and look at them for a while
• Put the shotgun away

The balance question doesn't mean that every story about everything has to have an "on the other hand ..." paragraph. It does suggest that a significant different in proportions -- the number of sentences that include "Biden" and "disastrous debate" vs. the number that include "Trump" and "convicted felon" -- is addressable.

People are, if not actually cognitive misers, at least cognitively rational. If you see something at the cave mouth every day and it hasn't attacked you by the end of the week, you're justified in deciding it's not a saber-toothed tiger -- and spending those resources thinking about some other risk. Drone stories can point out that people are creating a lot more risk by waving their shotguns and laser pointers around than Sagittarius is by hanging around the sky. And the cognitive resources that aren't spent on the Iranian mother ship off the Jersey coast could go into how genuinely inept and unqualified the incoming administration is.