Help With Finding The Correct Word

[Agent_Stelios]

Can anyone help me with identifying a word that means: when the focus is diverted from an issue of major significance to a more trivial issue to mask the fact that the main issue is more serious. The trivial issue, never the less becomes front page news thus taking the heat of the major issue. The government tend to do this. I seem to recall this happening in 1986 with the Westland affair and tends to happen when a scandal become in the public domain

[Zacs-Master]

Smokescreening?

[Smowball]

A smokescreen?

[Mosaic]

Obfuscation - posh word for smokescreen.

[Canary42]

Diversion

[heathfield]

Sidelined? ("Removed from the center of activity or attention").

[Chipchopper]

'Smokescreen' immediately sprang to mind, or maybe 'Disinformation'

[jno]

a magician would call it a distraction technique: tricking you into looking the wrong way. I'm not sure smokescreen is quite right; that suggests not giving you anything to look at at all.

[Leucocyte]

Dissemble?