[unishark]

I'd say its the job of academic researchers to dream up high-risk ideas to work on, and to hype up incremental advances as potentially proof-of-concept for those ideas (when they're decades away still, with many potentially unsolvable hurdles left). Generally they are careful to give all sides though, since their reputation among their peers is the basis for their career. The media is a very different story. They just need to catch the interest of the mostly-ignorant, then move on to something new the next story.