Why do NI news stations give so much airtime to Stormont's pointless Green vs Orange culture war baiting?

We've had decades of the same Green vs Orange pantomime performances from Stormont. Flags on certain days in certain places, Irish language street signs, and so on...

The list of the performative acts that all sides in Stormont engage in is endless; and the politicians' goals are clearly to get in the news cycle -> stay relevant -> get re-elected -> repeat.

This puts actual worthwhile political progress in the backseat and puts the Executive at great risk of further multi-year long hiatuses.

I just can't help but feel the news institutions are part of the problem, and is almost a hindrance to the progress the country has been making in the last decades.

Surely there's more important things to broadcast news about than the latest planned political stunts by these career news baiters.