Investigators often use the media as an unwitting (or cooperative) tool in psyching/flushing out suspects and even witnesses, as you no doubt know.
BTW, why would anyone think or even imagine that, with all of their current heartache and fear, that the Smart family would enlist you to sway the opinions of people who frequent the FR??
And why would anyone suspect this visibly shaken family of complicity in this horrible crime?? I can say with certainty that if I were a member of a family that was involved in a cover-up that could lead to the harming of a child, the next Thanksgiving dinner would not be pleasant, if it were held at all (please excuse my hyperbole). Indeed, I likely would be a witness, informant, and or misdemeanor defendant who no longer acknowledged being a member of such a family.
As Mark Twain once said, the only way that a secret can exist between two people is if one of them is dead...
I've noticed a LOT of such delusion of grandeur on these threads. ON an earlier one, for example, someone defended the cockamamie "theories" being thrown around--most of which cast the Smart family as evil villains--by saying "we're trying to help the authorities."