Bitcoin Rockets to New Heights—Why Did Mainstream Media Ignore the Rally?

While Bitcoin was busy mooning, legacy news outlets were stuck in the Stone Age.

Here's what they missed—and why it matters.

The stealth bull run

No front-page headlines. No breathless CNBC segments. Just a quiet 40% pump while Wall Street snoozed.

Media's blind spot

Traders made bank as BTC ripped past $100K. Meanwhile, the New York Times was too busy writing another 'is crypto dead?' thinkpiece.

Wake-up call

Next time your broker scoffs at digital assets, remind them who caught the last 10x move—and who got left holding their fiat bags.

Elite Media Coverage Gaps

The Wall Street Journal ran just two bitcoin stories in Q2. The Financial Times managed 11, and the New York Times ran another 11.

That’s a tiny share compared with other reports these papers produce—especially odd for an asset that has outperformed almost everything else over the past decade.

Based on the study conducted by Perception, these outlets treated Bitcoin almost as if it were off their radar. By comparison, those same weeks saw in‑depth coverage of ECB bond yields and quarterly earnings from large retailers.

High Volume Outlets Step In

At the other end of the theater were high‑output financial titles. Forbes led the pack with 194 articles, tagging 43% as positive and 24% as negative.

CNBC published 141 pieces, with a 42% positive rate and just 17% negative. Fortune added 117 stories, splitting 25% positive against 18% negative.

These publishers hardly ignored Bitcoin; they treated it as a moving market, not a fringe topic. They also drilled into specific angles—75% positive on retail adoption in Forbes, and 100% positive on institutional moves, for example.

Other outlets leaned the opposite way. The Independent ran 45 Bitcoin articles but marked 42% of them as negative versus only 18% positive.

Fox News produced 32 reports with 38% negative headlines, often focused on crime and security. Barron’s—ironically part of the same group as the Journal—put out 65 Bitcoin stories, nearly split between 25% positive and 27% negative tones.

These critical takes still kept Bitcoin in the pages, but they painted it mostly as a risk zone.

Investors who rely only on elite papers may miss big moves. When Barron’s runs 65 stories but its parent paper runs two, there’s a clear gap in what each audience sees.

By tracking headlines and sentiment as they appear—instead of waiting three months for a quarterly report—traders can spot shifts faster.

According to analysts, setting up a simple dashboard that taps multiple outlets could highlight when a bullish run is building or when warning signs are rising.

This split coverage matters. If you’re reading only the Journal and the FT, you might think Bitcoin is a niche topic. If you’re following Forbes or CNBC, you’ll see it as a major market force.

Based on these numbers, the big takeaway is simple: broaden your news sources. That way, you’re less likely to get blindsided by Bitcoin’s next big move.

As the sages WOULD say: the more, the merrier.

Featured image from Meta, chart from TradingView