I truly believe this has to be it. I avoid watching it but have to listen sometimes. And even though I am totally unmusical, I can tell that the COVID news was all in the same pitch, same cadence, same length of sentences, as the worst tragedies and disasters. I can recognize that as a hypnotic technique in itself. But recently I was reading an assertion that while most people start to lose track of speech when it is too rapid, say over 150 wpm, subconsciously we can actually grasp much more rapid speech, say 1000 wpm. I don't have means to test that. It would sound like a whine, I think. Anyway, an unscrupulous person records a message at the high speed and plays it along with a normal speed song or news report... This would take more thought and technical effort than just regular newscaster emoting and be devastating. Who would catch it? Yet I think somehow something like this has been done to make so many people so crazy.