The intensity of coverage has been remarkable as well, not because the coverage is undeserved, but because it far outpaces the amount of coverage devoted to other high-stakes conflicts over the past several decades. For example, The Tyndall Report has found that evening news programs from the three dominant news networks devoted more coverage to Russia’s invasion in March than to any other war — including wars the U.S. has engineered — in any month dating back to the 1991 Gulf War (with the exception of the NATO campaign in Kosovo). The sum effect of the wall-to-wall coverage makes Biden’s Russia policy a high-stakes matter in the eyes of the American public, and his perceived “toughness” emerges as the chief measure for assessing his virtue as a leader.

One does not have to reject the idea of aiding Ukraine to find this all worrisome. Personally, I think some sanctions on Russia and military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine are moral and, for now, strategically sound. But I find it distressing that so many reporters who surely know better seem so eager to pressure the White House into waltzing into a world war with a country that has the largest nuclear warhead stockpile in the world, overseen by a leader whose powers of judgment have become questionable.

The media is displaying an excitement for war it has shown for decades. Mark Hannah, a senior fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation, wrote an excellent and comprehensive analysis in Foreign Policy Magazine discussing how the mainstream media has rewarded many presidents for efforts to use military force and punished them for turning away from opportunities to do so.