“….600,000 Americans go missing every year, and about 90,000 of them, on average, are never found. If I were a member of the family of one of those Americans, I would be angry and disgusted at the disproportionate attention and resources being devoted to this one woman, Nancy Guthrie, whom I had never heard of before this week. And why should I have? She is not a crucial figure to the nation or society. Her greatest accomplishment is that she is the mother of a celebrity, and one who makes $8,000,000 a year.
The “Today” star has the resources to pay for a private investigation. We can empathize with her, but no more so than with anyone beset with a family crisis….I could list the important stories that the news media is burying, hiding or ignoring now but it would take up too much of my time or yours. It is true that other disappearances from high profile families became media feeding frenzies: the kidnappings of the Lindbergh baby and J.Paul Getty’s grandson were hysterically over-covered too. But at least they were both children.
The entire spectacle just rubs ordinary Americans’ faces in the ugly truth that they just don’t matter as much as the welfare of the rich, famous and beautiful.”
I have also dropped in periodic snarky comments about the endless nature of the “Savannah’s mother” story, and even briefly considered ending each day on EA with an homage to the old Saturday Night Live running gag about the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco…
I thought better of it. I wish “Today” would give similar thought to the fact that using a network news and entertainment show to focus on the personal problems of a single member of the staff over four months is indefensible. As for Guthrie, we are told that..
“Savannah took a brief hiatus from the show after her mother went missing from her Arizona home on Feb. 1. She returned in April.”
More than two months is not a “brief hiatus,” but clearly, it was not enough. Guthrie needs to take enough time off to be able to avoid breaking down on the air over a personal family matter, which is no less unprofessional using “Today” to bemoan other aspects of her life that aren’t going well. If her mother’s disappearance was ever legitimate news, it is now old news, and therefor non-news. She is paid, as I mentioned in February, $8 million a year.
In 2024, I went on Zoom and did a promised legal ethics presentation two hours after finding my wife dead in the living room. I did not break down sobbing, because I had a job to do, people trusted me to do it, I had made a commitment, and in my set of values, that made my obligations clear. In Guthrie’s case, her obligations are even clearer.
Ethics Alarms 
15% of those who go missing are never found?
I wonder how much of that is a function of criminal thoroughness in hiding a victim or of natural inability to find a dead person in a wilderness.
Or is 15% elevated because an uncountably large portion of the 60,000 never found, are, in fact alive somewhere and just don’t want to be “found” by the people who happen to be looking so are actively avoiding behaviors leading to being found?
I think it’s both, and I’m surprised the number isn’t higher.
Honestly though – there was a time in the late 80s early 90s when current crime mysteries was a cultural fascination and we had shows like Unsolved Mysteries and America’s Most Wanted that actively aired the stories of cases to solicit America’s help. I myself do not know what happened with that fascination. Did we just collectively burn out? Was witnessing so much of other people’s hardship just toxic to our own lives and we just gave up? Why don’t we have better websites with interactive features where we can learn about these active cases and come together when we have the mental and emotional capacity to lean into it?
Is part of the problem government transparency? I know a common refrain from the police is that they don’t want too many facts out there which only the perpetrator would know…but a database of case files and public information would be helpful to aspiring sleuths and willing witnesses. Or does the government now hate databases because it would expose some trends that it might deem problematic?
Seriously though. My family would occasionally go up to Ardmore, Oklahoma to visit my dad’s extended family. We’d stay at my Grandparent’s house in rural southern Oklahoma (where my dad grew up).
At times my parents, sister and grandparents would go visit others but I would stay at the house alone. Long about 8 or 9 pm, sun fully down, all quiet save the racket of crickets and grasshoppers in the fields, I’d throw on one of two available tv stations.
Inevitably the eerie staccato melody of unsolved mysteries echoed through the house and stabbed deeply into my psyche.
And no matter what, it was always, “tonight on Unsolved Mysteries: boy abducted from home in rural America, are extraterrestrials involved? And a Breaking report from the FBI: psychopathic serial killer escapes prison. Last seen in central southern Oklahoma. Be aware!”
Glued throughly to the screen and wondering if my parents had locked the door on the way out the crickets stopped chirping.
600,000 go missing and 90,000 are never found? Every year? That’s amazing. And average of 12,000 per state missing and 1,800 per state disappear every year? A rough averaged, but still. I’ve never had any personal knowledge of anyone going missing or never being found. Unfathomable. Maybe that’s why the story is so popular.
By the way, our piano tuner tunes the Guthrie piano. So, come to think of it, I guess this is the first gone missing story I’ve had some personal knowledge of.
I suspect that the Today show audience is getting the vicarious emotional arousal that they tune in for. The show isn’t designed for people like us.
The family has my deepest sympathies for this horrific crime. Imagine that your beloved mother has been unceremoniously dumped into a shallow grave, to be consumed by a variety of nature’s critters. It is an agonizing thought, even though it is nature’s way of recycling living beings. Still, it’s your mom and the temptations is great to sacrifice dignity and career to find answers.
Savannah should take time off until this is resolved or she can control her demeanor. This is no longer news, if it ever should have been, and she is not behaving as a professional. Her behavior is understandable but still inappropriate.