Television news has sunk to a new low, said Howard Kurtz in The Washington Post. The madness started the moment a bride-to-be named Jennifer Wilbanks 'œvanished' just days before she was going to walk down the aisle before 600 people at a lavish wedding in the tiny town of Duluth, Ga. 'œBride-to-be missing!' the breathless anchors said. The story should have died when Wilbanks turned up in Albuquerque and admitted that she'd merely gotten cold feet about the wedding and hopped on a Greyhound bus. But the media frenzy was just starting. In screaming headlines, tabloid newspapers branded Wilbanks a 'œflee-ancé' and the 'œRunaway Bride,' and networks launched round-the-clock coverage, featuring interviews with the jilted groom, the jilted groom's father, each of the bridesmaids, a host of psychiatrists, and 'œexperts' of every stripe. Everyone, it seems, had an opinion on why Wilbanks ran and whether her intended should take her back. 'œWe just can't stop talking about it!' chirped NBC's Campbell Brown.
Welcome to the age of tabloid TV, said Angela Tuck in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Ever since O.J. Simpson was accused of murdering his wife 11 years ago, cable-TV news has built huge audiences by specializing in running melodramas of this type. They have come in a nearly seamless succession: Monica Lewinsky, JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart, Laci Peterson, and now, Jennifer Wilbanks. In the age of cable-TV news, after all, 'œ24-hour newscasts have to be filled,' and murders and missing women make for sensational programming'”that is, if the victim is middle-class, white, and reasonably pretty. But isn't it time to let Wilbanks work out her problems with her therapist, 'œand move on to stories that have a real bearing on our lives'?
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