Cold Feet, Hot Story

Television has developed an addiction to these murder/abduction/missing women melodramas, which a decade ago would have been purely local stories, and takes them national in a matter of minutes.

Now, of course, we're destined to meet everyone in the family, as in the Terri Schiavo case and the Elian extravaganza and the other TV soaps of recent years. How long before Ms. Wilbanks herself, who forced law enforcement to spend tens of thousands of dollars to search for her, is amiably chatting it up with Katie and Diane and Larry and touting her forthcoming book?

While the Wilbanks story may have produced a modest ratings bump, don't underestimate the degree to which it's turning lots of people off. Some excerpts from my chat the other day:

Minneapolis, Minn.: "I didn't think we could get any lower, than "The Runaway Bride." Please. Make it stop."

New York, N.Y.: "Why do I know about this runaway bride story when I don't live in Georgia? This is - at most - a local story."

Washington, D.C.: "I found the behavior of the cable news media this weekend so disgusting. Their emphasis on a missing adult case-- there are hundreds of adults that go missing in a given week-- that happened to involve soap opera-like drama was incredible. Is it just me, or is the tabloid-like cable news media getting worse? Or have they always been like this? The panel of experts that were commenting on the "runaway bride's mental state, the anchors who seemed upset that this story ended up with the woman ALIVE-- the best possible scenario-- it was just unbelievable."

New York, N.Y.: "Every once in a short while, the media collectively decide that out of the thousands of missing persons cases, one is more important than the others. As annoying as this is, why is it that the one case invariably involves a white female?"

Kansas City, Mo.: "On the Damsel in Distress story. On Friday (?) I was switching channels and saw FOX discussing the value of the lie detector test the groom took and was thinking "is there nothing else going on in the world." But once it was discovered that she was a runaway, why didn't the networks drop the story? To me, I would have been embarrassed to keep following a non-story."

Bethesda, Md.: "I got so upset at the runaway bride coverage this weekend. Endless interviews with "experts" that "know" what the bride was thinking and tell us why she acted the way she did. It's disgusting and really makes me angry that they're not covering more important and relevant news that affects the lives of Americans. "

Charlotte, N.C.: "The 'Runaway Bride' non-story filled the TV media space Saturday morning on CNN, MSNBC and Fox. Do you think it's fair to say that each net's news directors honestly thought there was no bigger story in the nation than that, at the moment? Or was it a matter of pursuing the story because that's what viewers reward with their viewership? Or because they're all watching each other, and nobody wanted to dump out of it while the other nets were all over it? Or because they had already devoted the equipment to covering the possible abduction and murder, so they had to stick with it to justify paying for the satellite time? It was shameful."

Producers of the world, take note.

Columbia Journalism Review lists some of the people that CNN has interviewed since Saturday: