Natalee Holloway hijacks the news

With the Michael Jackson trial over, the BBC points to the US media's desire to return its "news" agenda to a favorite staple: a pretty white female who may have come to some harm. The latest candidate in this category is Natalee Holloway, the missing teenager in Aruba, who joins a class of news figures anointed by the media (albeit fleetingly) as instant news "celebrities." Their number includes Chandra Levy, Pvt. Jessica Lynch, "runaway bride" Jennifer Wilbanks - and even Terri Schiavo, who was quite pretty in previous years, allowing the media to continuously run photos taken of her in her 20s (before her brain damage).

media statistics
The BBC quotes figures from Arianna Huffington's latest column, which "compares the major US news networks' focus on three stories from 1 May to 20 June: Natalee's disappearance, the Michael Jackson trial and the Downing Street Memo." According to Huffington, on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC combined, there were 56 segments dealing with the memo, 646 on Natalee and 1,490 on Jackson.

Here are the full figures she cites in her post, for "the number of news segments that mention these stories: (from a search of the main news networks’ transcripts from May 1-June 20)."

• ABC News: "Downing Street Memo": 0 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 42 segments; "Michael Jackson": 121 segments.
  
• CBS News: "Downing Street Memo": 0 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 70 segments; "Michael Jackson": 235 segments.
  
• NBC News: "Downing Street Memo": 6 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 62 segments; "Michael Jackson": 109 segments.
  
• CNN: "Downing Street Memo": 30 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 294 segments; "Michael Jackson": 633 segments.
  
• Fox News: "Downing Street Memo": 10 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 148 segments; Michael Jackson": 286 segments.
  
• MSNBC: "Downing Street Memo": 10 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 30 segments; "Michael Jackson": 106 segments.

So it's not as if the network news was doing any better than cable in covering the DSM story.

The Natalee Holloway thing is, of course, the latest example of how a simple and appealing-yet-meaningless news story with limited applicability to the rest of us can hijack the news agenda increasingly set by cable TV. And Iraq and Social Security and Medicaid and North Korea and John Bolton (and the DSM) can all just take a back seat . . . again.

So how much more of this can the viewing public take? Apparently lots. The BBC piece quotes Mark Feldstein, associate professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, who reminds us, "Maybe there will eventually be a public reaction against it. But there really is a public appetite for it. . . . The public may be saying 'Isn't this terrible' but at the same time the ratings are going up, people are watching it."