Missing

Every weekday morning, or so it seems, Good Morning America features a dramatic story about a missing person: an infant stolen from a car parked outside a medical clinic; a young woman on vacation with friends in Arizona, here one minute, gone the next; a newlywed vanishes without a trace on her honeymoon. The details, such as they are, unfold in interviews with relatives, police officials, siblings and friends. Is foul play at work? Was the missing person living a secret life? Who had motive and means? Does the missing person’s husband or boyfriend have a history of cruelty or infidelity, drug use, gambling?

Why do so many people go missing in America? Compared to say, France or England or Italy, is America unique or does it merely appear that more people go missing here because our national media focus obsessively on these stories? And why is it that elderly people rarely go missing? Robin Roberts never opens GMA with “breaking news” about a grandmother who went out for an afternoon stroll and never returned. Is this because we don’t care about old people? Perhaps. Clearly, ABC News likes its missing persons young, female, attractive and/or wealthy, from a prominent family or an unusual background, because, if one or more of these criteria are present, the story is more likely to gain traction and run for several consecutive days, building momentum and drama and capturing an audience.

The American news media always claims to only give the viewing public the stories it wants to hear, which is why crime, sex, celebrity, and scandal rule, and important, but dense and complicated stories like climate change, food safety, war and peace, and how the economy really works and who it works for, are relegated to insignificant sound bites; people don’t care about these matters, not when Kim Kardashian’s marriage is tanking or Charlie Sheen is claiming to be a warlock or Ted Nugent threatens to shoot President Obama with a crossbow.

I wonder if there’s one producer at GMA whose only job is to troll for missing person stories. I can imagine the editorial meetings: what have we got in the way of crime, scandal, celebrity or missing persons? Any missing babies or toddlers or debutantes? You know what we need, what I dream about? Get this: Lindsay Lohan has a baby and then goes on a three-day drug bender during which time she leaves her child on a barstool in some Hollywood nightclub. Then, as she races around town desperately trying to remember what nightclub she was in last, she crashes her BMW into the back of a police cruiser on Sunset Boulevard. Ratings would go through the roof.

Yes, indeed, I can see it and hear it. Day after day, Robin and George breathlessly attempting to answer the burning question: where’s Lindsay’s baby? GMA would trot out its medical expert, its top legal analyst, a psychologist, a reporter covering the police department and another camped on the sidewalk in front of Lohan’s home, 360 degrees of coverage, morning, noon, and night, salacious and sensational, irresistible to the American viewing audience.

Even though it’s Sunday evening, I’m sure the dogged reporters at GMA are working hard to bring us a fresh missing person story for tomorrow’s broadcast.