They found Elizabeth Smart.

Really. And like 15 miles from home, too, after trips around the country, apparently.

Given that there was never any ransom request, I hate to think what she might have endured.

Can someone explain to me why this is so newsworthy? There are thousands of kidnappings each and every year. Some with similar happy endings where the child is returned safely. Why did this one become such a big deal? It's clear to me that the media picks and chooses which kidnapped children are the "cutest" or will generate the most media buzz, and plasters those stories all over. I agree this should be covered, but why did this one become the *lead story* for almost every major news outlet in the country?

You have to remember two things:

1) Many news agencies just pick stuff up off the wire, so there is less investigating and more repeating the same thing.
2) News vendors (notably broadcast, but other media as well) is all about advertising and rating. Sensationalism sells. The bigger the story, the better.

man, i rant about this every time i see one of these on the news... i want to know the same damn thing. I've noticed it's always middle class or wealthy white kids. Someone proove me wrong, i like eating crow on stuff like that.

Okay, I know wire services account for a lot of this stuff, but it's always *someone's* decision which of the wire stories are run, and in what order, and how much coverage each one gets (I know that in print, wire stories are sometimes just printed ver-batim, I'm focusing more on the TV coverage here.)

And, as stated in Loren's clarification of my original point, it's almost always the daughter of a wealthy white family. Even the JonBenet Ramsey thing, which was a murder and not a kidnapping, was the same story. All the murders that happen in the country, and that one gets all the coverage.

I know it's about sensationalism, and selling, but why do stories of rich white kids sell more than stories of kids from other walks of life?

Usually after that long of a time the kid is dead. Also most kidnappings that don’t end in death are by a relative or close friend. In this case it was by "The Drifter" so it has that "Move" feel. Most of the time "Drifters" kill the kids within a few hours.

It basically plays on every paranoid parents worst fears. The news media loves to scare people. It keeps them watching to see what horrible thing they have to worry about next.

You make excellent points. But I could easily find a dozen stories in the past year or two with the same composition, except the target of the kidnapping wasn't a cute white girl from a rich family. The Erica Pratt story I linked to is just one.

I'm not uncovering anything revolutionary here, we all know the media is biased in certain directions... It just really irks me when I see blatant examples like the Elizabeth Smart case.

The story won't go away until the "How was she treaded" question is answered. If she was boned on a daily basis it will have around even longer.

It definitely will be a move on the "Life Time" channel (or whatever that chick channel is).

If she was boned on a daily basis it will have around even longer.

Aw, come on, that's just not right.

You make excellent points. But I could easily find a dozen stories in the past year or two with the same composition, except the target of the kidnapping wasn't a cute white girl from a rich family. The Erica Pratt story I linked to is just one.

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Yes, cute and rich basically help in all areas. No one would give a rats ass if I was kidnapped.

Yes, it is not right, however people will want to know. Look at Jerry Springer. That's all fake trash and people love it.

This is a sick world

I love how a happy story like this can start getting people pissed off

Frankly, the whole Smart/Levy time period was good. Kidnappings were the current newsworthy item, and people were more focused on it. I fail to see how focusing on just a few instead of none is hurting the cause of finding lost kids. Sure, in your perfect little utopia, we'll have news coverage of every single abduction nationwide. Sound good? Come on, you wouldn't watch that. Therefore, what do you care?

Plus, how much direct effect do you think media coverage has on child abduction cases? I hardly think it would help, unless the investigators have a clue that could benefit from public information, and even in that case you get thousands of bogus leads. Trust me, I was in the DC Metro area during the whole Levy/Condit thing, and I didn't see the media coverage help at all. The police got thousands of bogus leads.

Quit whining and ignore what you don't want to watch. If you want to help the children, passive 11 o'clock news viewing won't do squat.


Sorry, it's been a long week

Plus, how much direct effect do you think media coverage has on child abduction cases? I hardly think it would help, unless the investigators have a clue that could benefit from public information, and even in that case you get thousands of bogus leads. Trust me, I was in the DC Metro area during the whole Levy/Condit thing, and I didn't see the media coverage help at all. The police got thousands of bogus leads.

...and there were thousands of bogus leads during the sniper case, too. But because of the news coverage, eventually, the real leads came in. Without the news coverage, you think the truck driver would have had any chance of recognizing the vehicle? It only takes one good lead (amongst the thousands of bogus ones) to solve the case. Same for the kidnappings.

Otherwise, you have some valid points in the rest of your response... I'm not suggesting that the news media cover EVERY abduction/kidnapping, but I do think they're irresponsible in their choice of which ones to cover.

IIRC, one of the reasons it was big news is because a family friend was a big-name Utah politician, and he made it his cause celebre. (HTML character entitities? Anyone?)

but I do think they're irresponsible in their choice of which ones to cover.

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"irresponsible" perhaps, however the media has one goal, to make money. If they were a non-profit organization designed to save kids your point would be valid. But as the head of Chrysler once put it "We are not in the busness to make cars. We are in the busness to make money."

Ah, didn't hear that one.

BTW I just type in ASCII codes to get int'l characters... Alt-130 in the case of cause celebré. I don't think the BBS allows HTML character entities.

Yeah, the sniper case was helped by some leads, but in that case the law enforcement was, at first, in a big hurry to put any new evidence out to the media. I think that if the police have evidence that would benefit from public information, that's when the media coverage and interest will help the case.

Of course, correct me if I'm wrong, but did they determine whether or not the two sniper suspects ever actually USED a white panel van during their shootings?

I just type in ASCII codes to get int'l characters... Alt-130 in the case of cause celebré. I don't think the BBS allows HTML character entities.

First, 130 isn't ASCII, as ASCII is a 7-bit character set. Second, using character 130 assumes that the viewer uses the same character set I do, which is a reasonable assumption in ASCII-land (anyone using an EBCDIC browser?), but not necessarily in ISO-8859-1-land. Third, Alt-130 is pretty tough to do in Solaris. (Actually, I can, in general, do it easier by typing <compose><e><'>, but Netscrape 7.0 doesn't understand that. I can do it in a xterm and copy and paste, but that's a pain, and sometimes doesn't work.) Fourth, I know that the BBS doesn't understand character entities, but there's no reason it shouldn't. ASCII is disabled because of potential security problems, but there's nothing you can do with character entities that could cause a security problem. My parenthesized statement was a paean (paean?) to the BBS gods to make them work.

Yeah, the sniper case was helped by some leads, but in that case the law enforcement was, at first, in a big hurry to put any new evidence out to the media. I think that if the police have evidence that would benefit from public information, that's when the media coverage and interest will help the case.

Right, and that sounds just like your average kidnapping, where police are also very quick to release any evidence that's found, in the hopes that someone will connect a few dots and find the missing person.

The white van thing was immaterial. By the time they were caught, law enforcement had indicated that the suspects were travelling in a blue Caprice, whch is the car that the observant truck driver found, at a rest stop, I believe.

Wasn't the white van thing provided by someone intentionally fabricating evidence? Or was that something else?

First, 130 isn't ASCII, as ASCII is a 7-bit character set.

Oh stop it. 130 is part of "extended ASCII." Yes, it depends on your character set, but your message made no indication of whether you were complaining about the BBS supporting HTML character entities, or were just unsure how to get an E with an accent aigu to show up. I was just providing a solution that works a majority of the BBS. Yes, the BBS should support them, but since it doesn't, I figured I'd point out the alt-codes thingie. I forgot for a moment that you're usually browsing on a Solaris box.

Çhéërs.

The reason I asked about the white van was because if they never actually used it in the shootings, then that was a detrimental lead. The police stopped ALL traffic on I95 north (that's, well, a hell of a lot of cars), and proceeded to pull over every single white panel van.

However, in some cases I'll give it to you. Looks like I'm enjoying the crow dinner on this one.

However, I would say that this was a result of the overexposure. I find if very surprising that someone just recognized the guy on the street somewhere. I mean, how many of us would recognize the people on those "Have you seen me lately?" cards that you get in the mail?

By the way, I wasn't aware that the snipers got life without parole recently. I'm not sure how I feel about it because I haven't decided where I stand on the death penalty, but it's good that they're not going to walk among us again. The story.

Looks like I'm enjoying the crow dinner on this one.

Yechh. They might as well just have a permanent daily column on the life of Elizabeth Smart. If anyone really cared about the actual human being involved, they'd let her out of the spotlight and at least attempt to get herself back to a normal life. But this is America.

Yeah, you know they're just going to get more invasive. They probably have news vans outside their house with cameras pointed at the girls' window.

We can only hope that by the father saying she's physically OK, that means in every way. I don't mean I want to know about the whole ordeal, it would just be nice to know if she's ok or not.

Extended ASCII was only ever defined for IBM PCs. In fact, I haven't seen it since those days.

Interestingly, e-ague isn't character 130 in ISO-8859-1. It's 233. Yet, somehow, I'm getting character 233 when you're sending character 130, but, one would assume, you're seeing character 130. I wonder what kind of magic is going on there?

She's cute. If she were a few years older...

Very strange. It's also 233 on my end... But 130 when I type it. I'm guessing that to type things in on Windows, you can use extended ASCII keycodes, but maybe Windows or the browser does translation to the target character set.

Let's call it PFM and put an end to this exceedingly silly and pointless subthread.

Word.