Ake your post

"Rome had circus's...we have paralympics and twitter."

Wikipedia

A circus is a traveling company of performers that may include acrobats, clowns, trained animals, and other novelty acts.

Media circus is a colloquial metaphor, or idiom, describing a news event where the media coverage is perceived to be out of proportion to the event being covered, such as the number of reporters at the scene, the amount of news media published or broadcast, and the level of media hype. The term is meant to critique the media, usually negatively, by comparing it to a circus, and is considered an idiom as opposed to a literal observation. Usage of the term in this sense became common in the 1970s. [1][2]

I rest my case