I think it's just a case of the media needed news to report. I can't remember where I read or heard the specific quote, but it is essentially the media that "makes" a crime wave...

Newspaper X needs a hot story to report. So they go find something that nobody else is talking about, to get people to buy their newspaper. This summer, it was child kidnappings. So Newpaper X is all over that, and people are buying their newspapers, and watching the news channel affiliated with them (if they are affiliated with one.) So Newspapers Y and Z see that, so they, too, begin reporting on them. And so commences the race to be the first to report the next abduction. And now it seems like kids are being nabbed left and right, when in all actuality, child kidnapping are *down* this year in comparison even to last year and years before that. Anyways this will go on until Newspaper F finds some other story, whatever it may be, and reports on that. It's a cycle.

I think soon it'll become like kids bringing weapons to school. After Columbine, any kid caught with any semblance of a weapon in school was front page news. Eventually, the media and the public lost interest, and found something else to report about, and the same things that were once hot news now just warrant cursory mentions in the Local section of newspapers.

I'm not defending this as right. But I think that's why it happens. The rush to get the scoop. Pretty soon, nobody will have a leg up on anybody when it comes to child kidnappings. So somebody will have to find something else to beat everybody to the punch on.

And it *is* very frustrating. There's no doubt about that.

The Other Matthew