….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.
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.