No nonpolitical story has dominated the media this month like Guthrie’s disappearance. On broadcast and cable news, each development, whether it’s suspect text messages from people demanding ransom or videos from Savannah Guthrie, one of her siblings, or all of them together, is pored over and replayed all day.
To juice the sense of urgency, there’s usually a “breaking news” tag slapped on these stories, even when there’s nothing breaking or new to report.
What’s driven all this attention is a combination of an insatiable true crime fascination, fame, and, especially, social media. Across various platforms, but primarily on Instagram and TikTok, there’s a proliferation of amateur sleuths concocting reckless theories and accusations about motives and potential suspects — including family members. It’s clickbait without accountability.
Now Nancy Guthrie has the single-name recognition of a celebrity, and there’s a proliferation of profiles about her two oldest children, Camron and Annie, who lived quiet lives until their mother’s abduction.
Anyone who has lived through the horror that the Guthrie family has endured understands the need to keep the media and public focused on getting their loved one back home safely. We also recognize that all disappearances are not afforded the same attention, and that there are many other missing people right now whose names, faces, and stories we’ll never know.
But there’s also a palpable luridness about how some have glommed onto the Guthrie story.
In an age when true crime TV shows and podcasts garner devoted audiences, this fixation isn’t new — think of the 2021 disappearance and murder of Gabby Petito. Nothing surpasses details of a family’s nightmare unfolding in real time. Every hour arrives with the possibility of a new clue to be dissected and discussed. No one knows how it will end.
On Tuesday, the FBI released video from a doorbell camera at Guthrie’s home that captured a masked and armed person at her door on the morning that she disappeared. Hours after the video aired, an Arizona man was detained for questioning, but he was released from custody.
The video set off a new frenzy of speculation and a parade of former law enforcement officials analyzing every frame — a lot of talking loud and saying nothing.
All of this showboating is reminiscent of “Ace in the Hole,” a devastating 1951 Billy Wilder film that starred Kirk Douglas as a sleazy reporter who turns the story of a man trapped in a New Mexico mine into a self-serving media circus where the journalist’s antics overshadow the man desperate to be rescued.
For those cranking out thoughtless content, it’s less about Guthrie than whatever notoriety they can gain, perhaps even monetize, for themselves.
To a certain extent, those who’ve posted half-cooked theories about Guthrie’s disappearance aren’t much different than the California man arrested and charged with reportedly sending a fake ransom note that demanded bitcoin from the Guthrie family. It’s all about making selfish use of someone else’s horror.
Between the amateur sleuthing and the attempted exploitation, the Guthrie case brings to mind a mostly forgotten episode connected to the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. When the FBI released photos of the potential bombers, a former classmate of Sunil Tripathi, a Brown University student who had been missing for a month, posted on Twitter that he resembled one of the suspects.
Her comment got media traction and soon his family’s Facebook page was inundated with hateful messages. Some branded him a terrorist.
But Tripathi had nothing to do with the bombings. He had died by suicide a month earlier. Another family was left in grief, and those who exacerbated it moved onto other tragedies to exploit.
As of this writing, law enforcement officials are reportedly sifting through more than 18,000 tips on the Guthrie case. Any one of them could crack it. But until then, the obsession with Guthrie’s disappearance will continue to be an exciting, harmless distraction for many — but not for the family that only wants the truth about what happened to their loved one.
Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].
