Reply #8: what was once local news is now national news

[amazona]

I guarantee you that back in the day children went missing every day and no one gave one tiny **** in the media. In the 70s the streets were filled with runaways (which I'm guessing are still the overwhelming majority of teens) -- if you ran away you could hook up with other like-minded kids almost immediately. Now every kid -- and apparently every bride with cold feet -- gets trumpeted to the skies. Human nature hasn't changed but the willingness of the media to report on hard financial, scientific, or political issues has changed. Cheap "missing kids" hysteria fills the empty air time.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72