Natalee Holloway

Natalee Holloway (born October 21, 1986) is a U.S. teenager from Mountain Brook, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham, whose disappearance on May 30, 2005 during a post-graduation trip in Aruba caused citizen concern in Aruba along with a media sensation in the United States.

Media coverage

Locally, the Aruban Press published extensive news on the story both in Dutch http://www.arubatoday.com/ and in the local Papiamento language http://www.diarioaruba.com/. The story generated some interest in the Netherlands when Joran and Paulus van der Sloot were arrested, but this interest quickly subdued a few days later.

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U.S. television networks devoted much air time to the search for Natalee Holloway, the investigation of her disappearance, and rumors surrounding the case; Greta Van Susteren, host of On The Record on Fox News, perhaps most prominently. The saturation of coverage triggered a backlash among some media critics who saw the attention paid to this case as disproportionate, presumably because Holloway is a young attractive blonde girl. They have labeled the sensation a symptom of "missing white woman syndrome". Others see this as a mother's fight for the truth. MSNBC ran a segment on "How mom keeps spotlight on the Holloway case." CNN ran a segment criticizing the amount of coverage their competitors have been giving to the story 1. Other commentators have criticized the Aruban response to Twitty. 2

Related Topics:
U.S. television networks - Greta Van Susteren - Fox News - Missing white woman syndrome - CNN

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Other commentators have criticized the disproportionate amount of government and media attention directed towards the finding of Holloway, such as the use of F-16 Fighting Falcons to aid the search, while over 800,000 children are reported missing each year. http://www.rhodes.edu/NewsCenter/NewsArchive/Rhodes-College-to-Aid-in-the-National-Child-Identification-Kit-Program.cfm

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Immediately following the announcement that the Netherlands was sending F-16s to join the search, the popular blog Kuro5hin published a scathing editorial comparing the coverage of Holloway's disappearance with that of Reyna Alvarado-Carrera, a 13-year old Hispanic girl who disappeared from her home in Norcross, Georgia, in May. The article, which features an expletive in the title, has continuously remained atop Google's search results for "Natalee Holloway".

Related Topics:
Netherlands - Kuro5hin - Reyna Alvarado-Carrera - Hispanic - Norcross, Georgia - Google

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The saturation coverage of Holloway's disappearance by the American media was largely superseded in late August 2005 by Hurricane Katrina. Beth Twitty has alleged that Aruba has taken advantage of the media hiatus to release the suspects and discourage continued U.S. media presence on the island. http://www.scaredmonkeys.com/?p=1579

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