Reddit (and now HN) is the only source that shows this on the front page - I wouldn't have heard about it otherwise. Corporate news outlets have kept it from the front page.
Call me cynical but that explains why the media suddenly seems to care now but didn't seem to care earlier when it was a "developing story" they could have slung more eyeball grabbing ($$) fear porn into.
People on the parts of the internet HN stays far away from were sharing pictures of the crash and fireball for a few days before anyone gave a crap. Then someone arrests a reporter and suddenly the media has a bone to pick.
Yeah I wonder for how many seconds it was there, since you can't even count it in hours, but "UFO" is still there as the biggest news in world as you can see in my screenshot and also by visiting the page.
For instance if I would not be BANNED from posting links on HN I'd post also this which I find more interesting news affecting everyone than some dumb made up baloons which are on par with Iraqi WMD
But aparently I'm ALWAYS posting too fast only when it comes to posts, but have no such problems with comments, it's sad how low can go HN in shadowbanning users without transparently communicating why is one banned from something.
I'm skeptical that it's a deliberate conspiracy, and this is not a scientific test, but I just checked the following news sites, and not one of them had any related hits for "Ohio" listed on their main pages:
BBC America
Reuters
CNN
Fox News
The New York Times
The Seattle Times
MSNBC
CNBC
Seems a little weird for sure. All of those sources have coverage AFAIK, but one has to dig to see it. I imagine algorithmic content promotion is at least partly a factor. I.e. if people aren't clicking on news about that story as much, it probably falls off the main page. So perhaps it's more like paid corporate Wikipedia shills, except it's click farms to promote other content and get the embarrassing news off of the front page?
That having been said, I know of at least two topics the American press is likely to deliberately downplay or avoid reporting on - solo suicides and certain types of civil unrest - so while I strongly dislike conspiracy theories in general and think it's unlikely in this case, I can't rule out the possibility that this is another one of those topics.
I just loaded up CNN and saw 20 stories before having enough. The worst example being a celebrity pregnancy. I did not note anything about this story. I viewed the mobile website and desktop version.
I can think of a billion things going on right now that are vastly more important than anything about a celebrity pregnancy.
https://archive.ph/esy2M