In-depth reporting is expensive. It is much cheaper to have people sit around or on remotes and talk about politics like it's baseball. But there is also a predetermined intent in terms of what is reported and how it is reported, and the degree to which a story is pushed. Both have bad effects.
As a digital technology writer, I have had more than one former student and colleague tell me about digital switchers they have serviced through which calls and data are diverted to government servers or the big data algorithms they've written to be used on our e-mails by intelligence agencies.