Media-spam: Chilean miners are supposed to be rescued today. What's it distracting from?

Sure there are a lot of things melting down right now, and the trapped miners are being should be rescued today. Is this drama'd media-blitz distracting from something else happening now, to be revealed later?
Example link: [link to www.ctv.ca]

There are over 7,000 stories on this event at Google world news:
[link to news.google.com]

It may sound like a ridiculous question with so many things going on around the world, but I am curious about these massive focuses on one subject like a soap opera. This is just how the system works normally, or is something else going on that does NOT want media coverage?