Gabby Petito

SuperMatt said:
I think it’s also getting attention because a lot of people are doing this “van life” thing where they travel the continent, living in their van. I recently discovered that one of my high school friends did this with their spouse for a couple years and had a website, Instagram, etc. all about it.
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So you think she’s the only person doing the van life thing that has disappeared?
 
Alli said:
The more I see of this, the more I wonder why it has become sensationalized. Young men and women go missing every day. Many are murdered by partners. What is it about this case (other than the blonde hair and blue eyes) that has captured such media attention?
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Too many reporters may be sitting in front of a screen these days waiting for "news to happen", for one thing.

Probably got picked up on social media early on, sounded mysterious and open-ended, so then it probably sells papers / collects clicks to pursue it in mainstream outlets.
 
Alli said:
The more I see of this, the more I wonder why it has become sensationalized. Young men and women go missing every day. Many are murdered by partners. What is it about this case (other than the blonde hair and blue eyes) that has captured such media attention?
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I don't understand the MSM sending reporters to report live from Wyoming. At least one NYC station has sent a reporter to send updates during their news. It's just stupid and one of the reasons I argued with my Journalism professors in college. That and the "fairness doctrine" that allowed right wing nonsense to have a say when it should just be facts.
 
WaPo tried to run down why this disappearance and death(s?) have been getting so much play. Apparently a lot of interest got stirred up on TikTok and it just kept snowballing after that. Anyway the Post piece delves into a number of reasons for why a particular disappearance or murder may get more attention than others not really so dissimilar from it. Some say the extra social media poring over this one is useful, others would categorize it more as obsessive or an indulgence in "crime porn". I guess the phenomenon is here to stay. One more way to spend time when maybe you have too much of it on hand and no job or avocation.


When one of these stories about a missing and then discovered-dead young blonde white American woman turns up in the news of this violence-prone country, and lingers there for days or weeks on end, I still always remember a brief AP wire clip in the NYT back in the 90s one morning that was about the death of a 5-year-old black kid named Charles Moss in Chicago, whose stepfather beat him to death with bare hands and a tree limb over the kid's failure to be able to recite the alphabet past the letter "G" on that particular day. Why wasn't that all over the news? H is for hell, Charles. In a way it's surprising his death even made it into the New York Times or the AP wires to begin with.
 
Alli said:
The more I see of this, the more I wonder why it has become sensationalized. Young men and women go missing every day. Many are murdered by partners. What is it about this case (other than the blonde hair and blue eyes) that has captured such media attention?
Click to expand...

This has seriously bugged me pretty much from the start of the coverage. It’s got all the hallmarks of the media’s "The only missing/dead person who matters." reporting. It’s disgusting and they really don’t give a shit beyond clicks.

Also it got me to thinking as a very private person, if this type thing happened in my family I don’t think I would welcome the nations eyes and thoughts laser focused on it. Requesting/giving the family privacy is largely just a lip service disclaimer and all the thoughts and prayers don’t accomplish a damn thing, although I imagine it could provide some degree of comfort in such a tragedy, but not more so than from people who actually know the people involved. "If only I got the nation‘s sympathy I would feel much better" said no one ever. The media is turning your tragedy into a revenue stream, pure and simple. If it didn’t put eyeballs on their site/channel they wouldn’t cover it.
 
ronntaylor said:
I don't understand the MSM sending reporters to report live from Wyoming. At least one NYC station has sent a reporter to send updates during their news. It's just stupid and one of the reasons I argued with my Journalism professors in college. That and the "fairness doctrine" that allowed right wing nonsense to have a say when it should just be facts.
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The fairness doctrine was supposed to be about presenting alternative views in the same report. Reagan actually killed it and any semblance of it now is as long as one source is reporting a side anywhere then another side is free to report complete horse shit to counter it and they aren’t obligated to even mention the alternative view.
 
Alli said:
So you think she’s the only person doing the van life thing that has disappeared?
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Just a guess that the police video they had from weeks prior really added to the compelling nature of it, almost like one of those real life detective shows playing out in real time.
 
Herdfan said:
For me the thing that sticks out is that her parents hadn't heard from her in 2 weeks? I can guarantee I would have been talking to the police on like day 3, maybe sooner, of not hearing from my daughter.
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They said on a report yesterday that the parents saw red flags before she went missing. The other thing is how the suspect's parents were completely lying to the cops, they said he took the car (which was really parked in the garage) and had to take a battering ram into the house.

I get he's your child and I'm not saying you have to drive him down and turn him in but to hinder like that is criminal, they should be charged with obstruction of justice.
 
There were over 19,000 homicides in the US in 2020. The family possibly not wanting the national spotlight aside, imagine being the friends and family of those 19,000+ victims watching this type of coverage checking off all the interest boxes of why the public should elevate the level of this tragedy compared to theirs. Again, disgusting.
 
SuperMatt said:
Here’s an article about the disparity in the media coverage of and urgency of rescuing missing people based on their race.

www.insider.com

710 Indigenous people, mostly girls, were reported missing over the past decade in Wyoming, the same state where Gabby Petito reportedly disappeared

Search efforts for Petito, whose disappearance has caused a national furor, have focused on Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
www.insider.com www.insider.com
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The media has tried to be more inclusive by adding the qualifier that they got shot by a cop. Then they’ll get more equal coverage including victim blaming.
 
Currently the initial ruling on Gabby is death by homicide but no details yet.

IG has lit up with support for indigenous and non white missing people. I agree they deserve as much attention as this case.
 
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Yeah, the ruling on Gabby's death, well, that is no surprise -- homicide. So, so sad for her family!!! I'm sure that this Brian Laundrie guy, the person she loved and trusted until things went south over time, many ways, is responsible for this and I'm also pretty sure that eventually they'll find his body, too, with in his case clear evidence of suicide. That won't be a surprise at all. How could he live with killing the person he supposedly loved, had loved for a long time, even if their final moments together were during conflict and he acted out in a moment of anger, impulse, whatever? This whole situation is just very, very troubling and probably the unsurprising but also disturbing aspect of it for those of us not personally concerned is how easily we could predict how things were going to work out, how this was going to end......
 

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