Posted on 08/08/2005 12:08:56 PM PDT by LibWhacker
NEW YORK (AP) - Bringing a microphone and camera crew to the gates of an Aruba landfill this past week, Greta Van Susteren returned to the island that her nightly Fox News Channel program has figuratively called home recently. Van Susteren's "On the Record" has relentlessly followed the mysterious disappearance of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway of Alabama while on a graduation trip to Aruba in May.
Critics find it an obsession bordering on the bizarre, twisting traditional notions of news judgment and becoming Exhibit A in the media's fascination with missing people - as long as they happen to be young, white, female and pretty.
But while doing this, Van Susteren has been rewarded with her biggest audiences since making the switch from CNN three years ago.
She averaged nearly 2.2 million viewers a night in July, up 58 percent from the same period a year ago, according to Nielsen Media Research. CNN's Aaron Brown used to put up a tough fight in the time slot; now Van Susteren routinely triples his audience. She narrowly missed 3 million on July 26, her biggest audience this year.
"On the Record" even topped Fox's prime-time king "The O'Reilly Factor" eight times, although Bill O'Reilly was off on four of those nights.
"I'm always happy when the viewers are happy," Van Susteren said. "I obviously don't program for the people in the newsroom or my friends or the people I went to law school with. I program for the viewers."
It's not just Nielsen that confirms interest in the Holloway story. Van Susteren said she spends an hour or two a day combing through e-mails from viewers on the case, and they often supply her with good questions.
The mystery plays to her strengths as a lawyer.
"For me, it's sort of an intellectual challenge," she said. "Where is she? How did she disappear? Did somebody drop a date rape drug in her drink? Did she walk off? Is this not really a homicide but a missing person? ... I could go on. These are fascinating to me and they're obviously fascinating to the viewers."
Desperate to learn what happened to Natalee, the Holloway family has been grateful for the interest and available to help fill hours of airtime.
"Greta has gone above and beyond to publicize this case and keep people interested," said Paul Reynolds, Natalee's uncle. "Getting involved the way she has been is an incredible effort. She's keeping people interested and keeping people looking."
The Aruban government hasn't been happy with all the coverage, believing much of it makes the authorities look amateurish and unprofessional, but Van Susteren has government spokesman Ruben Trapenberg's respect. "Even though she is aggressive, she will try to get both sides of a story," he said.
The case has all the elements of a classic summer page-turner: the bright-eyed girl whose search for fun may have gone horribly wrong, a privileged Dutch boy who saw her before she disappeared but claims innocence, authorities following several hot and cold leads.
Without being a regular, tuning into Van Susteren's show many nights is like opening up a mystery novel in the middle.
It's all a little baffling to those who didn't buy the book.
"I think she's registered to vote in Aruba now," joked NBC News reporter Josh Mankiewicz, who narrated a "Dateline NBC" report examining why television networks pay an inordinate amount of attention to missing white women.
With war and terrorism in the news, critics wonder how one missing person case can so dominate a news program. Even on the night President Bush nominated John Roberts to the U.S. Supreme Court, "On the Record" spent far more time on Holloway.
Her name came up 178 times during a computer search of "On the Record" transcripts from the past two months, only seven times for the same period on Keith Olbermann's "Countdown" on MSNBC. The count was 434 times for Fox's three prime-time news shows; 50 for CNN's.
"Emotional pornography like the Natalee Holloway story is more alluring, just as a car crash is better TV than a news conference," said Matthew Felling of the Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs. "But this media rubbernecking is partly to blame for the public's dissatisfaction in the media as a newsgathering enterprise."
Two views on how to program a cable news network couldn't be displayed more starkly: Either use news judgment to put events into perspective, or give the people what they want, said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
It's hard to say whether Van Susteren's ratings grew because she spent more time on the case or whether she spent more time on the case because the ratings grew, said Bill Shine, Fox News Channel's vice president of production.
Probably a little of both, he said.
"I don't know what you're doing this weekend, say you're at a beach or in the deli, but what do you think people are going to ask you - what do you think is going to happen with the Roberts nomination next month or what's going on with that story in Aruba?" Shine said. "I think my money would be on Aruba."
Rosenstiel concedes he can't understand the intense interest in the Holloway story. "It's just a classic tabloid story that they're milking and if that's the way you want to make your living, fine," he said.
Criticism of cable networks for a slavish devotion to a story, whether it merits the attention or not, is nothing new; just insert the names Chandra Levy or Laci Peterson for Holloway. One of many reasons why Fox has been able to soundly beat CNN in the ratings with a considerably smaller news staff is that viewers respond more to this approach.
"Maybe part of their brilliance is they're not as guilt-ridden about it," Rosenstiel said.
Everytime some politician farts or a blond girl disappears, it's GongShow time with the FOX NEWS ALERT nonsense.
Gretta VanUseless / Tabloid Tabbitha. I can't stand her.
And a bottle of shampoo... oh wait she did start washing her hair about a year ago.
You honestly believe there aren't cases in the US every day in which the officials, for personal reasons, make no effort to solve the case and actually try to ensure no resolution is ever made?
Gee, you're really into this, eh?
I agree. Since I'm not a tabloidphile, I never watch this crap. The Discovery Channel, the Western Channel, or War Stories, and M*A*S*H are my primary choices. Otherwise a Tom Clancy-type book.
Greta on content: "I obviously don't program for the people in the news room or my friends or the people I went to law school with. I program for the viewer."
In the other words (nose-in-air): "I'm just schlepping 'bread & circus' stuff for the chumps in fly-over land."
I haven't watched Fox news in weeks, mebbe the last time they had a `Bigfoot' sighting alert. Or maybe it was Jacko.
How about if we give the Dutch an offer they can't refuse (say, the 2005 equivalent of 60 guilders) for Aruba? It would make a nice base of operations off the coast of Venezuela...
I never watched this crap. It's a waste of mental bandwidth.
IF you ask me there is a lot of suspicious behavior on the part of the missing Girl. I think she was drunk and They took advantage of her. When you are 18 in a foreign country your inhibitions disapear. I don't think she was miss innocent. She got away from home and may have became the freak of the week and paid the price for it.
Fox ought to try it. Sounds like a perfect early afternoon show for them.
Same here..not a tabloidphile. I do really watch Fox News after 6:59 in the evening (daily viewing for me is Britt Hume's show, every night). I will admit that I watch (and like) Tucker Carlson's show. But those are my only nightly "musts".
I do too. The Aruban authorities are trying their best to protect their own. It is disgusting. In this case, Greta and the rest of the media are doing the right thing and playing watchdog to the corrupt government in Aruba.
That would be my reason for begging for an assignment there.
There is ZERO news value in this story. none. Nada.
It should not be on the air at all.
But, if given the opportunity to go, I would do it admittedly just to be there for awhile.
Not one minute? Do you mean to say that you watch FNC but not O'Reilly, H & C or Greta? All three have regular coverage of Aruban politics.
My interest is in the who-dunit angle, but only to see if the media will dig up the drug money connection, thereby exposing the phony War On Drugs. Natalee's "disappearance" is the tip of an iceberg, IMO. There's a lot more here than meet's the eye and I think that's why Fox (and CNN) might be paying more attention to the story. But maybe that's giving them more credit than they deserve.
Exactly. I think they would have in the past, but that was when news was actually news.
A symbiosis has developed between the family, Greta/Fox and obsessive viewers. The family feeds information based on rumor and speculation to keep their daughter's name in the news, the media promotes these stories because it gives them something new to talk about and hence maintain their ratings and the obsessive viewers keep watching because, well they are obsessed.
pMSNBC's already tryed it. Didn't work.
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