St. Petersburg Times reporter David Adams talks about his Natalee Holloway story. Note to David: The best way to start an interview is probably not to lie.
The last time I got such a big response was in the days before email and the Internet. I wrote a story about Hurricane Andrew for a British newspaper, a first person account of what you do when a hurricane hits your house, and I wrote that I evacuated my house with my wife and we left the cat behind. And I got so many outraged letters about "how I could do such a thing?" As it turned out, by the way, my wife did take the cat at the last minute, after I filed my story.
Let me just see if I have this straight. You were writing a story about what to do when a hurricane hits your house, but it was before a hurricane hit your house? No. You were writing the story while you were evacuating and the facts changed in the minutes between turning in the story and leaving the house? Wait. You wrote that you had evacuated your house and left your cat, but you obviously hadn't because if you had, you would have known your wife grabbed the cat on the way out. Aren't you not supposed to write about things that haven't happened yet? Or is it more likely that something was made up, either then or now?
Regardless, at issue here is that he wrote about how there is too much coverage of Natalee Holloway and that is benefiting Fox News.
I have had emails from somebody at "Good Morning America," somebody at ABC, somebody at CBS, somebody at NBC, and several other print journalists, all saying, "way to go." There is a great deal of disquiet among both print and broadcast media about the way this story is being handled.
This wouldn't be the same Good Morning America, ABC, CBS, and NBC that covered Terry Schiavo ad nauseam, would it? It wouldn't be the same Good Morning America, ABC, CBS, and NBC that did back-to-back stories on the "Runaway Bride" would it? It wouldn't be the same Good Morning America, ABC, CBS, and NBC that does 3 stories a day on Cindy Sheehan, would it? What exactly is the difference? And what is so bad about covering a defenseless young girl who was probably murdered at the hands of a privileged son of a politico in a corrupt country?
What happened to comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable?
