Why Does Elizabeth Smart Get So Much Attention?
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: The media's latest victim. Why is the disappearance of Elizabeth Smart getting so much airtime? Could it be because she's cute, white and middle class? And what about the other missing kids like this seven-year old Milwaukee girl who aren't? And the revolving door spins again. Former Clinton spinmeister George Stephanopoulos gets David Brinkley's old Sunday morning job at ABC. Can he be fair? Welcome to RELIABLE SOURCES, where we turn a critical lens on the media. I'm Howard Kurtz. Ahead of the program, Cokie and Sam are out. George Stephanopoulos is in as the new host of ABC Sunday talk show, "This Week." We'll get reaction from a top Republican political operative later. But first, the case of missing teenager Elizabeth Smart, which has captivated the cable airwaves since she was abducted more than two weeks ago. Daily press conferences with family members carried live on CNN, Fox and MSNBC. The latest developments getting the breaking news logo including Friday's announcement that Bret Michael Edmunds, the so-called drifter wanted for questioning in the case, had been apprehended in a West Virginia hospital. Is all this coverage excessive or is it the only hope that Elizabeth Smart may be returned to her family? Well, joining us now in Salt Lake City, Scott Swan, reporter and anchor for KTVX TV. He's been covering this case since the abduction. In San Francisco, Marc Klaas, whose daughter Polly was abducted and murdered in 1993. He is the founder of the KlaasKids Foundation. And in New York, James Wolcott, contributing writer for "Vanity Fair". James Wolcott, why is this Elizabeth Smart's story? It's a heartbreaking story, but why is it getting so much national TV coverage, even when there's been very little new information to report?</s>JAMES WOLCOTT, VANITY FAIR: Well it's an archetypal pot myth. When I saw that Fox's coverage was titled "Where is Elizabeth Smart?", my thought was well, you know, who killed Laura Palmer? It's like "Twin Peaks" in that you have sort of a blonde vision of innocence, of maidenhood, and there's a danger that she's been sacrificed. It's also, again, it plays into the Jon Benet story. Jon Benet was, you know, this sort of Lolita-ish...</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.</s>WOLCOTT: ... beauty pageant contestant and what makes it even more sort of archetypal is that Elizabeth Smart played the harp. You can't get more angelic than that.</s>KURTZ: Right. Marc Klaas, you've been doing this kind of work for a decade now. Has this just become a cable TV staple, where you seize on a local tragedy involving a kid, and just kind of pump it up into a national melodrama?</s>MARC KLAAS, KLAASKIDS FOUNDATION: You know, this is an issue that's not gotten nearly the attention that it deserves. In America in a given day, 2,000 kids are reported missing to law enforcement; 1.3 million children are living on the streets of America, and there are 3 million cases of child abuse reported, yet nobody does anything about it. We consider it status quo.</s>KURTZ: Why are we not hearing more about the 2,000 kids missing and we're hearing only about the one child who's missing, Elizabeth Smart?</s>KLAAS: Well we're not only hearing about Elizabeth Smart. She happens to be the one right now for many of the reasons that were just stated, but also, you know, this goes to the heart of every parent's worst fear. This is about somebody breaking into your house and taking your child. This is about an unambiguous battle between good and evil. This is black and white in an ambiguous world, so it's very easy to choose sides and root for the victor in this. So, you know, I think it's a disservice to talk about the voyeuristic qualities or this business about her maidenhood and that kind of stuff. She's a little girl like so many other little girls in America that has been victimized and ...</s>KURTZ: Right.</s>KLAAS: ... it's up to us to do something about it and every -- sir, every time one of these stories makes the national news, and I would say the last one that did would have been Rilya Wilson, certainly, it gives us an opportunity to talk about the issue, and it gives us an opportunity to learn from it and hopefully keep it from being repeated in the future.</s>KURTZ: Let me go to Scott Swan in Salt Lake. Friday's announcement of the arrest of the so-called drifter in this case was covered on television as if Al Capone had been captured, when we don't even know at this point whether this guy has any involvement in the case or not. Is that because you're all out there 24 hours a day covering anything that moves on this story?</s>SCOTT SWAN, KTVX-TV SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH: Well I think that has something to do with it, but I think the other thing is that police don't have very much to go on beyond Bret Michael Edmunds. Edmunds is the -- is the man that was seen spotted living in his green Saturn up in the neighborhood by a milkman a couple of days before the kidnapping and so, this is a man, as the police chief has said, is a question mark in this case and they want to put a period on it.</s>KURTZ: Scott Swan, do you see yourself as covering this story? I know you've been covering it very extensively or as part of an effort to try to help find Elizabeth Smart?</s>SWAN: Well, since we're a Salt Lake TV station, we consider ourselves part of the community and so I think that we would love to be able to help someone see Elizabeth's picture and be able to find this 14-year old. But we're also interested in some of the other elements of this particular story -- the police investigation and the tremendous volunteer effort that's under way. We've had over 10,000 people going away from their jobs, leaving their kids at home with babysitters so they can come out and help search for this girl. That's as much a part of this story as anything.</s>KURTZ: James Wolcott, Jon Benet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart are white, cute middle class. Isn't it true, let's be candid here, that white editors and executives in news organizations tend to identify with people like themselves and that those kind of cases are going to get more attention in part for that reason?</s>WOLCOTT: Well, I think that's part of it. I think part of it is that if this is an archetypal story being played out, part of it is the whole notion of the American dream, and the American dream is upscale. This is why so many cases, horrible cases, that are, you know, in -- you know, in impoverished neighborhoods or whatever, go unnoticed. I mean it takes -- it takes certain things coming together to make it a story that snowballs and everyone's interested in. And I don't doubt the sincerity of people who use this as -- you know, who believe this is an issue and a cause, you know, in terms of abused children, but for most of the people watching, the issue is a smokescreen for what they're really interested in, which is -- it is a voyeurism and it's a cliffhanger. People want to know how it comes out.</s>KURTZ: Right. Well, we certainly do all want to know how it comes out and hope that it comes out well in this case. But there is a seven-year old girl in Milwaukee named Alexis Patterson, who a couple -- until a couple of days ago I didn't know about this case and 99 percent of journalists didn't know about this case. Let's take a listen to an interview with her father about the media coverage.</s>LARON BOURGEOIS, ALEXIS PATTERSON'S STEPFATHER: Everybody knows about Elizabeth Smart. Everybody, and I don't think it's fair. Give her just -- give ours just as much airtime as you gave her everywhere, because, I mean, these kids are helpless. What can they do?</s>KURTZ: That was Alexis Patterson's stepfather, and Marc Klaas, any sympathy for a parent or a stepparent who can't seem to get any media attention for their missing child?</s>KLAAS: You know, of course there's sympathy, but we have to remember the vast majority of these kidnapping cases are local cases. So we shouldn't all be focusing on national attention for these situations. We should be looking within our own community. But this case of Alexis Patterson is exacerbated by the very miserable criminal history of the stepfather himself. His story doesn't add up about when the girl -- when the girl went missing. He's been involved in numerous criminal convictions himself including a police killing. It's going to be hard to garnish sympathy for a situation like that and it's certainly not the child's fault. She deserves as much attention as Elizabeth Smart or any other child, but there is certain elements within the community, as Mr. Wolcott said, that are not coming together in this case and make it much more difficult to get the kind of national attention that Elizabeth Smart and Rilya Wilson and others have been able to generate.</s>KURTZ: Well, I would just point out that it may well be the stepfather's past criminal history. It doesn't have anything to do with her disappearance, and I don't want us ...</s>KLAAS: No.</s>KURTZ: ... to imply otherwise.</s>KLAAS: No. No. No.</s>KURTZ: Now Scott Swan, does it help in these cases not only to have a media savvy family and relatives who come out and they hire a lawyer who holds press conferences so television has something to cover and who also perhaps hire PR people. Would that help generate the enormous attention in the Elizabeth Smart case?</s>SWAN: I think it does. They have been making sure that the family members are getting in front of cameras at every potential -- at every potential opportunity, but their goal is, they've made it clear, is to find Elizabeth. They want as many people across the country to see Elizabeth's picture and to be searchers, to be looking around their homes, around their neighborhoods, and I think that that's why they're out there.</s>KURTZ: Marc Klaas, we've got about 30 seconds.</s>KLAAS: Sure.</s>KURTZ: Does it frustrate you at all that there are so many other cases of missing kids that don't get this kind of media attention that there's a certain selectivity involved.</s>KLAAS: Yes sir, it absolutely does because they all deserve the same amount of attention. But you know we have to take advantage of opportunities like the Elizabeth Smart case to educate the public, to bring awareness to the public, and to find ways to prevent these kinds of things from happening in the future.</s>KURTZ: OK, Marc Klaas, Scott Swan in Salt Lake, thanks very much for joining us. Jim Wolcott, stay put. When we come back Mike Murphy joins us to talk about a new talk show host with a partisan past. How will George Stephanopoulos play the political game on Sunday morning TV?