These things change gradually, but there was a time when CNN (for example) mostly covered news, and politics was generally a minor sideshow unless something very big was happening. "Pundits talking politics" was half hour per day (the old Crossfire), and now an expanded stable of pundits (I mean analysts I mean strategists I mean whatever we call them) blathering about all news in a similar fashion dominates all coverage.
There are various reasons for that, including but not limited to the fact that it's cheaper and easier to do "news" that way. But whatever the reasons, having news being a subset of politics instead of the other way around definitely affects how things are covered and how people perceive them. "Don't politicize [x]!" is always dumb, but it's especially absurd when much of our news coverage does that as a default.
