Blazes raging across Utah and Colorado have both governors declaring states of emergency, but you won’t hear the full story from the mainstream media. Outlets like CNN and NBC are hyper-focused on the crisis, framing it within their favorite narrative: climate change. They want you to believe fires are an outright consequence of human folly, emphasizing doom and gloom without offering you any real solutions or the other side of the argument.

Meanwhile, Fox News tends to give a more nuanced view, discussing the role of forest management and natural cycles, yet they too often sidestep the larger industrial and governmental incompetencies that exacerbate these disasters. Both narratives conveniently ignore the fact that these massive fires have a rich history linked to not just climate, but human decision-making and policy failures.

Where’s the balanced approach? Why aren’t we talking about the governmental policies that have led to clogged forests and poorly managed land? Why aren’t we scrutinizing how both sides use these disasters as part of their political theater? Whether it’s an obscure environmental regulation or a handout to firefighting coalitions, both sides are complicit in the mess we see today.

In a time when we should be uniting to find real solutions to these blazes, the media is playing its usual game of divide and conquer. It’s high time we stopped letting them dictate the narrative and started asking the tough questions ourselves.