The Gabby Petito story

See Ramsey, JonBenet

 

Caylee Anthony, Elizabeth Smart ...

 

The concept has its own Wikipedia page, that has a ton of examples.

With the Gabby Petito story, the "unusual" thing would be the boyfriend immediately clamming up and refusing to explain why he returned alone. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know - Can you be charged with obstruction for a missing person's case? If so, he probably should have been in police custody from the jump. The officers from Utah who let them go with just a warning also didn't really cover themselves in glory here either.

 

White girl syndrome.

It is a really weird story. He either killed her or abandoned her and then went home like his fiancee never existed, basically. His family protected him for days. Then he wonders off. My guess is he killed her and is now laying dead himself somewhere in that preserve in Florida.

 

It's the "she could've been my daughter" syndrome that always hit the white dude news directors and producers in the gut.

 

OK, a couple of things...

Yeah, it's a Barbie Alert. A cute white girl disappears and it makes the news.

Having said that... she was a cute white girl traveling the country with her fiance documenting all of it on YouTube who disappeared shortly after an encounter with police and the fiance just kept driving along and went home and now he's disappeared too. And he and his family aren't talking.

It's a great story. People care about stuff like this, particularly with the obvious domestic/mystery angle to it. The fact that she's all over YouTube means it's much easier for TV to do the story than with a typical missing woman story. People can do the performative social media outrage with the hashtag where they don't even bother to get her name right... but that kind of ignores the fact that it's a compelling story.

 

Here's the thing that gets me, I suppose - I think you could do all of this with non-white victims, and they'd *still* be stories that get numbers. It's like how Hollywood executives are "amazed" when something like "Straight Outta Compton," "Black Panther," "Crazy Rich Asians" and/or "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" does bonkers business, across all races.

 

There's a black guy in my Twitter feed that said "If I showed up back home from a cross country trip and the little blonde white girl with me had disappeared I'd have been in jail the next day.", and I'm not sure he's wrong. I think there's an obstruction case against the parents by now, although I think I read that they said they were told not to talk by their lawyer. If so, they probably beat that.

The case broke because someone at that park where she was found had taken a picture of their van, and when she went back and looked after hearing about her case she called it in. Her body was found very close to where it was parked.

 

Baltimore Mother Admits to Killing 6-Year-Old Daughter and 8-Year-Old Son

Would you prefer that the media go 24/7 on this story? Cute kids murdered by mom. No one cares. Let’s see how it would play out.

and everyone has a completely relevant point about journalisms obsession with cheap and easy stories that resonate with the largest audience. Too interested in the commercial aspect of a story like Gabby’s murder.

 

I guess young Black girls don't rate to TV news directors.

 

And they have enough material to chose from. Maybe they don’t teach diversity in media at Missouri or Northwestern.

The urgent crisis of missing Black women and girls - Women’s Media Center
BLACK GIRLS TAKEN: Over 50 Black girls missing from NY/NJ

 

Or as I used to call them, in a way you only can in a newsroom, the "missing blonde white virgin cheerleader of the week."