Back in 2008, I talked to George Lakoff, the Don't Think of an Elephant guy, at Virtually Speaking. He pointed out that there was a huge failure of framing on the part of the media (and, implicitly, the left) regarding regulatory policy under Bush. He said that the media thought of toxic cat food, toddler toys with lead-based paint, approved drugs that endangered patients' health and so forth all as different, individual stories, when in fact they were the same story.
Personally, I heard a lot about the gutting of the EPA as an agency that enforced laws passed by Congress because I knew some people working there. The environmental waivers granted off shore drilling operations were part of the public record. That these routine law violations were not considered newsworthy was part and parcel with a media acceptance of executive branch and industry circumvention of laws on the books.
