page_title: Disappearance of Natalee Holloway
section_title: Media coverage
hierarchical_section_title: Disappearance of Natalee Holloway / Media coverage
caption_attribution_description: News crews standing by the wall for Natalee Holloway.
context_page_description: Natalee Ann Holloway was an eighteen-year-old American woman whose mysterious disappearance made international news after she vanished on May 30, 2005, near the end of a high school graduation trip to Aruba in the Caribbean. Holloway lived in Mountain Brook, Alabama, and graduated from Mountain Brook High School on May 24, 2005, days before the trip. Her disappearance resulted in a media sensation in the United States, and remains unsolved.
  Holloway was scheduled to fly home from the Caribbean island on May 30, 2005, but she failed to appear for her flight. She was last seen by her classmates outside of Carlos'n Charlie's, a restaurant and nightclub in Oranjestad. She was in a car with local residents Joran van der Sloot and brothers Deepak and Satish Kalpoe. When the three men were questioned, they said that they dropped off Holloway at her hotel and denied knowing what had become of her. Upon further investigation by authorities, Van der Sloot was arrested twice on suspicion of involvement in her disappearance and the Kalpoes were each arrested three times. Due to lack of evidence, the three suspects were released each time without being charged with a crime.
context_section_description: U.S. television networks devoted substantial air time to the search for Holloway, the investigation of her disappearance, and rumors surrounding the case. Greta Van Susteren, host of Fox News' On the Record, and Nancy Grace, on her eponymous Headline News program, were among the most prominent television personalities to devote time to the incident. Van Susteren's almost continuous coverage of the story garnered On the Record its best ratings to date, while Grace's show became the cornerstone of the new "Headline Prime" block on Headline News, which ran two episodes (a live show and a repeat) every night during primetime. As the case wore on, much of the attention was given to Beth Twitty and her statements. Aruban government spokesman Ruben Trapenberg stated, "The case is under a microscope, and the world is watching."
  The saturation of coverage triggered a backlash among some critics who argued that such extensive media attention validated the "missing white woman syndrome" theory, which argues that missing person cases involving white women and girls receive disproportionately more attention in the media compared with cases involving white males or people of color. CNN ran a segment criticizing the amount of coverage their competitors gave to the story despite what they characterized as a lack of new items to report, with CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper calling the coverage "downright ridiculous".
  Early in the case, political commentator and columnist Arianna Huffington wrote, "If you were to get your news only from television, you'd think the top issue facing our country right now is an 18-year-old girl named Natalee who went missing in Aruba. Every time one of these stories comes up, like, say, Michael Jackson, when it's finally over I think, what a relief, now we can get back to real news. But we never do." In March 2008, El Diario commented, "But if doubts persist about cases involving missing Latinos, there are reasons why. These cases rarely receive the attention and resources we see given to other missing persons. The English language media, for example, appear to be focused on the stories of missing white women, such as with the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in Aruba. Cases of missing Latino and African-American women often remain faceless, if and when they are even covered."
  CBS senior journalist Danna Walker stated, "There is criticism that it is only a story because she is a pretty blonde—and white—and it is criticism that journalists are taking to heart and looking elsewhere for other stories. But it is a big story because it is an American girl who went off on an adventure and didn't come back. It is a huge mystery, it is something people can identify with." Good Morning America anchor Chris Cuomo was unapologetic of his program's extensive coverage of the Holloway case, stating: "I don't believe it's my role to judge what people want to watch … If they say, 'I want to know what happened to this girl' … I want to help them find out."
  Holloway's family, however, took the opposite approach and criticized the lessening of coverage of her disappearance due to a shift in news priority when Hurricane Katrina struck on August 23, 2005. The saturation coverage of Holloway's disappearance was finally eclipsed by the hurricane. Beth Twitty and Dave Holloway alleged that Aruba took advantage of the extensive coverage of Hurricane Katrina to release the suspects, however the deadline for judicial review of Van der Sloot's detention was set long before Katrina.
  Dave Holloway lamented in his book:
   Hurricane Katrina had left the door open for the boys to be sent on their way with little publicity and few restrictions because it took the world's focus off of Natalee, but only for a brief time. The huge amount of publicity had waned and, during that time of quiet for us, Joran and the Kalpoe brothers were sent home ... All of the news shows that had followed our every move only a day before had now become fixated on the next big ratings grabber: the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
caption: News crews covering the story 11 days after Holloway's disappearance, June 10, 2005
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