Back -- and Callous to a Runaway Bride

by Cliopatria

I'm back in Odessa. When I left eleven days ago it was 90. Today it is 50. And rainy. Rain will be with us all week. It's nice to be back home, but it is supposed to be sunny here.

I'll send a dollar to anyone who can give me a good answer as to why the story of the woman who fled her fiancee before their wedding and faked her own kidnapping should be in my newspaper or on my television set. (If you live in the greater Duluth, Georgia -- ie Atlanta -- area, you are ineligible, though even then, it should not be front-page stuff.)

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Derek Charles Catsam - 5/4/2005

Right, but is this newsworthy? Lots of bad things could but, incidentally, don't often happen. When it does, should it be front page, lead story news?
dc

AJ Fucile - 5/4/2005

I think it also has to do with fear - other engaged couples see this and wonder if it could happen to them....and it could.

Derek Charles Catsam - 5/4/2005

Jason --
That might almost be an answer worth fifty cents. But the fact that you scare quote "good reason" indicates that you know as well as I that it is crap.
dc

Jason Nelson - 5/4/2005

Mr. Catsam,

The "good reason" is that the major media outlets are scouring the wires for any sign of the next Peterson, Yates, Jackson, women killed in Utah, or child kipnapped in Florida case. In some sick way Im sure somebody was hoping that they could spend the next week talking about "did the boyfriend kill her or not?". I avoided listening to the coverage as much as possible. I am disgusted.

Rich Holmes - 5/4/2005

Here, here.

Derek Charles Catsam - 5/3/2005

So we're all in agreement. Ralph confirmed what I would have guessed about local coverage. Chris showed us that this sort of nonsense is not just an American phenomenon (indeed, the tabloid culture in much of the rest of the world makes our media look downright staid.). Oscar reminds us that the pop culture wheel keeps turning. And Van raises issues that remind me of a conundrum I've tried to address here a number of times -- do newspapers and "the news' have a responsibility NOT to give us what we want sometimes? We know murder sells, but unless there is some sort of serious upturn, why is it always the lead story? There surely are market forces involved, but isn't this why we have the style section?
As I suspected, I'll probably get to keep my dollar.

dc

Van L. Hayhow - 5/3/2005

I have posted on this type of question before and don't have any real answers. I will only note, as I have before, that the press wouldn't be covering this story with such an insane level of intensity unless they felt the public interest was there. After all, this isn't WWIII. While I agree with Ralph that this is public exploitation of a private matter, its the public fascination that drove the story. Why the public picks up on certain stories and not others has always amazed me.

chris l pettit - 5/3/2005

It was in the Cape Argus today...and I saw it in Australian, Venezuelan, Chilean, and Jordanian media...this is really insane...

Can't give you an answer...just thought you would find it funny...

humanity is really hopeless methinks...

CP

Ralph E. Luker - 5/3/2005

There's a good prior question. Why would anyone plan a wedding in which there are to be fourteen, count 'em, 14 bridesmaids. Princess Diana, Grace Kelly, and Jackie Kennedy totaled that many. I'd say it was something to run from. But of course Derek's correct. The front page of the AJC had three inch headlines, a big color picture and a single story that covered most of the front page Sunday. Disgraceful public exploitation of some painful private story.

Oscar Chamberlain - 5/3/2005

I will relate the story of two friends who, in the early 1980s left Indiana for a one year walking tour of South America. As they left the United States, the last headlines they saw concerned who shot JR. (I don't think they ever found out.)

A year later, as they returned to American sensory overload, it took them some time to figure out who Luke and Laura were and why their wedding was getting national press.