There’s word that prosecutors in Aruba are standing by as authorities pursue a tip from a reporter that may blow open the Natalee Holloway case …
Journalist Peter DeVries says, on his Web site, that the Holloway case will be ’solved’ … as soon as Sunday rolls around … so he can solve the case on Dutch television …
ABC News will air a 90-minute special, “The Final Hours of Natalee Holloway,” Monday evening. A NINETY-minute special.
Holloway is NOT news. Any type of ‘confession’ from van der Sloot is NOT news.
And devoting an hour-and-a-half to an irrelevant issue is just ridiculous and shows incredibly poor news judgment. It should be said, however, that it shows incredibly keen entertainment judgment.
Bill O’Reilly: “I’ve never seen in my 30-year career, a crime story covered this way, ever. It’s a mystery. It’s a soap opera. It’s a reality show and each night, people come in for the latest. I thought it would dissipate. I thought it would go away. It has not.”
Anderson Cooper (from 2005): “We did a number of stories after the American teen went missing and her family’s anguish is and hard to imagine and we understand why they want the story to remain in the news, but we’ve been kind of stunned, because every night, our cable competitors devote hours and hours to this story, even though, sadly, nothing new is happening. We decided to start tracking their coverage, because to be honest, it’s getting downright ridiculous.”
Now the argument can be made that Holloway coverage is justified because it’s part of a larger story. It’s a stance that the may point to a problem related to missing and exploited people. If this is the case, then her disappearance should only have been pro actively used as a way to humanize a problem – then the focus of the problem becomes the issue and not one woman.
And if the issue really is missing and exploited people, then Holloway’s ultimate fate is still irrelevant.
Terry Schiavo. The runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks. JonBenet Ramsey. And Natalee Holloway.
The Holloway story should be left to the Birmingham, Alabama and Aruba markets – every single other market has a mountain of other stories far more important, relevant and interesting than the disappearance of one woman.
