….and Savannagh Guthrie’s mother is still missing.
I know I’m harping on this, but it needs to be harped on. The news networks are still giving breathless reports on this single disappearance of a woman the American public knew nothing about 11 days ago, and whose only claim to importance is that she is the mother of the Today Show’s hostess, which doesn’t even mean as much as it did a decade ago.
The Today Show made Dave Garroway, Tom Brokaw, John Chancellor, Barbara Walters, Jane Pauley, Joe Garragiola and Bryant Gumbel national figures; also Willard Scott and J. Fred Muggs, a chimp, once upon a time when most American actually watched the morning show. Now? I bet more Americans listen to Bad Bunny recordings than had a clue who Savannah Guthrie was before CNN, MSNBC and Fox News started spewing this story up our metaphorical noses like Navage.
Yet there are already specials being aired about Mrs. Guthrie’s disappearance, which makes no difference to the fate of the nation, the state of the union, or the welfare of the public in any way, shape or form. The coverage, which now resembles the endless obsession with the Malaysian airline disappearance (but a lot more than one woman vanished with that mystery), is preventing the public from learning about other events and issues that are genuinely important to more than a single family. It is also helping the news media bury stories its political bias causes it to want buried.
(I find myself fighting the impulse to hope that Mrs. Guthrie was abducted and eaten by a trans female illegal immigrant Gavin Newsom supporter, who had been arrested and released 12 times by the Biden Administration.)
This episode does have importance, however. It is important because it proves that our journalists are not journalists. They are greedy, irresponsible hacks who hold the same ethical standards as drug dealers and organized crim: prey on people’s base needs and addictions, because it’s so profitable. Hey, everybody loves a mystery, right?
Sure…and the tale of Savannah Guthrie’s mom, however it turns out, will make a dandy “48 Hours” episode. One. Last night we were getting breathless updates about an arrest. The guy’s been released: now the mystery is whether he is a DoorDash driver or not.
It would all be funny if it wasn’t so damning. The people we rely on to inform us so we can be competent citizens in a republic are silly, greedy, irresponsible and untrustworthy hacks. We shouldn’t need this ridiculous spectacle to convince us by now, but how can anyone doubt it after this?
Ethics Alarms 
I’m sure the Democrats would love for it to be someone on the right who hates the news media. Face it, even if it is a “trans female illegal immigrant Gavin Newsom supporter”, only conservative news sources will report it, making it a right-wing conspiracy theory that no one else will believe.
Anyway, it’s someone she knew. The masked and gloved person was covering the ring camera to hide his identity when he came back for Mrs. Guthrie. I may have seen one or two brief news stories about it while finishing up “Anna Karenina”.
This is the nature of the 24/7 news cycle. They have to fill it with something. It’s the fault of viewers for tolerating it.
Could she have died from the stress of the kidnapping combined with her poor health? And the kidnapper, left with no leverage to complete the plan, sees no way out of what is now a murder, kills himself. Depending upon where the kidnapper located his hideout it could be a long time before someone discovers the bodies and ends this thing.
And, yes, the illustration of how the fair of appearance and those famous to some degree get lots of people looking for them and the rest, as Dave says, are just statistics.
Sure. It could also have been an attempted break-in gone wrong that resulted in the abduction/death of Mrs. Guthrie and the ransom attempts are either a cover-up to lead people to believe she’s still alive or bad actors elsewhere who are taking advantage of the situation.
My favorite comment on Anna Karenina from my favorite college English professor friend, who was NOT a Tolstoy fan: “If I’d have been in that train station, I’d have pushed BOTH Anna and Vronsky in front of that train.”
Have you read “War and Peace?” It’s long, as long as Napolean’s retreat from Moscow back to relative safety.
“War and Peace” is on the list. And I agree about “Anna Karenina”. There are some good parts in it but characters who cheat on their spouses rarely get my sympathy.
Unfortunately, the media frenzy over Mrs Guthrie’s abduction is just an amplification of the phenomenon that makes the disappearance of a pretty young white woman front-page news, while the disappearance of a homeless man is just a statistic. It’s a window onto whose lives the public, or perhaps journalists, find interesting.
I haven’t seen her photo on the wall of images of missing people at Wal-Mart. I guess they don’t rate national media attention.
For about a week, I assumed this was about some Instagram ‘model’ or Tic-toc ‘influencer’. I guess at least it is a ‘journalist’ celebrity that no one knew.
Honestly, I’m glad there’s something to take the media’s interest besides the constant images of the old people in diapers screaming at clouds in the Minnesota sky. Not one second of airtime for that spectacle was earned. Nancy Guthrie by large margin is more worthy than that. Should news media be more responsible and cover the best topics? Of course; but at this stage, they’re trying to see if they still have the power and ability to all chip in and coordinate the safe return of a mother of one of their own.
Why the Guthrie case? Probably because it seems safe, prominent, and asks the right questions. When a teenager goes missing, there’s a potentially strong chance that they’ve just “ducked out” for a few days, that they ran off to be with a lover, that they ran away from an abusive home, that they’re gone off to start a new life in safety and on their own. There’s a risk that they create a “folk hero” of sorts that convinces other teenagers to take off and ghost the world they know with two possible outcomes: you’re advertising to would be “bad guys” that this vulnerable beautiful child is out there with zero security and create a “finders keepers” scenario -or- you’re just adding to the noise of actual at-risk kidnapped children. Isn’t the statistic pretty high that child/teen kidnappings are by one parent against another parent?
Now let’s look at the “adult” market of missing persons. Probably off on a drug bender or again, ghosted their life.
The news media has to pick and choose the stories they tell and unless there is a pledge and evidence that a person was taken against their will and they actually need to be found – they usually just report it and move on. They want to make a difference – the right difference – to help things get to an appropriate resolution and they certainly don’t want to be pawns or puppets in some larger scheme to generate fame and sympathy.
In the Guthrie case, fame was already attained. This isn’t a ploy for Samantha to “make it big”, she’s already America’s morning sweetheart and seemingly a very kind person and competent journalist. The victim is 84 years old and certainly not trying to ghost her family or start anew; particularly with the reconstructed evidence of the Ring doorbell camera showing the masked man.
So it’s a safe story for the news media to focus their efforts. They won’t be made out to be pawns or puppets. They aren’t aiding and abetting shenanigans. The victim definitely is at-risk. It has a built in nationwide audience and they get to ask the question: how could we let this happen? What is the special motivation here? Is it really kidnapping and a play for ransom? Is it actually a cover-up of a burglary gone wrong?
In summary: I don’t resent the out-sized response of interest in this case. I think we’re passing the point in history when we realize that news media is simply “storytelling for profit” and there’s an infinite number of ways to find more stories if you’ve had your fill of the one that larger companies have decided to push for “profit maxxing” or for their friend in the industry.
That’s why I keep coming back to Ethics Alarms. Our host and the commentariat continue to provide me with new stories, lesser known stories…and great perspectives.
Couldn’t pass this up:
Trump gives Joe Biden the legacy he deserves
That’s really funny.
I am not hopeful that an 84-year-old woman has survived this, and sympathize with the Guthrie family.
I’m working on taxes, so keep the news on for background, and have been astonished that a full two hours at a time has been devoted to what is essentially repetitive coverage by a variety of guest experts, and while I do find the investigative process a little interesting, there is other news to cover.
Think I’ll switch to Spotify.
dialogue on “drops of god”
m: can I trust you?
w; I’m a journalist
silence
fill in the silence as you wish.