Opinion: What the Media Is Hiding Behind the Nancy Guthrie Story

By John F. Di Leo, Opinion Contributor

Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie, was last seen on January 31. A missing persons investigation began when she was reported missing on February 1, and her daughter’s fame caused the news story – and the manhunt – to go national within days.

While it is generally assumed that the case was some kind of “burglary gone wrong” – someone broke in just to steal, expecting the home to be empty, then panicked and kidnapped the resident – it’s really all just speculation. It could be a burglary that turned into a kidnapping or murder; it could be a murder or kidnapping disguised as a burglary. As I write this, nobody knows for sure.

While everyone hopes, of course, that Mrs. Guthrie is freed, safe and healthy, as soon as possible, nobody knows much for certain about the case except the investigators.

And yet – the story has dominated the headlines with 24/7 coverage for nearly two weeks.

Why?

This is simply not a case that merits such an investigation. Nothing against Mrs. Guthrie or her loved ones – let us stipulate that we hope for the best possible result – but this should not be national news, and it should not take up valuable news time.

Conspiracy theorists have always looked at a news story like this and asked the question, “What more important stories are they burying?”

Fifty years ago, when most people had more faith in the honesty of the newsmedia, such concerns were dismissed as rubbish. “There are a million stories every day; they cover the stories that the public wants them to cover, that’s all. They’re a business, like any other.”

But recent decades of blatant bias by the mainstream press have changed that assumption. It’s no longer just suspicious conservatives asking the question. Today, almost everyone looks at this 24/7 coverage of the Guthrie disappearance and asks, “What don’t they want us to know about?”

Well, here are a few possible items that the media could make room for, if they didn’t have the Guthrie case filling up so many slots:

The Job Numbers: Unemployment is down. The Left claimed that with the Trump administration reducing the numbers of bureaucrats – through a combination of retirements and attrition – unemployment was sure to skyrocket. But that hasn’t happened. While the net new job creation numbers haven’t blown the doors off, unemployment is down, not up. That means the combination of Trump administration policies – deportations, encouragement of self-deportation, shrinking the size of government, and tax cuts – has enabled the economy to provide for the legal workforce. The mainstream media always bury positive economic news during Republican administrations – especially in election years – any way they can.

The Iranian Revolution: We really can’t call it anything else. Even though the Iranian people were disarmed by the mullahs, so we can’t witness the kind of gun battles that typically constitute a civil war, there are other signs that the 2026 uprising is far more than a mere outbreak of protests. The Iranian people have burned down dozens of mosques and madrassahs – the symbol of the malicious theocracy that has abused the Iranian people for 47 years. In response, the government has killed tens of thousands of unarmed protesters, mowing them down by machine guns in the street, and arresting countless others for imprisonment and torture, but this hasn’t stopped the Iranian people.

Over five million have participated in protests over the past month, and it’s only growing. But the mainstream media supported the mullahs’ takeover of Iran 47 years ago; perhaps the mainstream press doesn’t want to admit they were on the wrong side all along. So today, they provide minimal coverage of the world’s most important current civil war.

Election Integrity: The American people know there’s vote fraud. Many may believe that Republicans exaggerate the amount, but virtually everyone knows it’s a real problem. Why? Perhaps because more and more Americans have walked into the polling place in recent years and when they gave their name, they were told “You’ve already voted!” Enough experiences like that, and it’s hard to close your eyes to it anymore.

Requirements for Real ID laws have over 80% support in the polls. More and more people have seen the results of surveys – such as the Heartland/Rasmussen poll revealing that more than 20% of Americans admit to committing at least one form of vote fraud in the 2020 election. In recent weeks, the revelations that hundreds of thousands of Georgia ballots in 2020 were almost certainly fraudulent ought to have been the biggest headline, but the mainstream press is invested in a continuation of the institutional vote fraud that keeps the Democrats one of our two major parties.

China’s Economic Travails: The American newsmedia have been inexplicably allied with the government of Mainland China for decades. Perhaps it’s the culture, perhaps it’s the cuisine; maybe it’s the marxism or the sheer “differentness” from our own ways that has made Mainland China a hero for them. But for whatever reason, the American press has long championed our increased partnership, and our subsequent dependence, on China, and has continually downplayed China’s vocal militarism and continuous threats against such true American friends as Taiwan, Japan, and the Philippines.

In recent weeks, there has been news of further turmoil at the highest levels in Beijing. Perhaps President Trump’s dealmaking with other countries is bearing fruit. Perhaps the Beijing politburo is losing confidence in Xi Jinping. Perhaps the massive real estate collapse caused by ridiculous government investment in not just ghost towns, but whole ghost cities, is driving them to realize what a house of cards their economy is. Add to that the landslides, floods, and bridge collapses of the past year, and it’s no wonder that the whole world is talking about a possible shake-up in Beijing. The only wonder is why the American newsmedia doesn’t make any room for such coverage.

Tariff Deals: After years of the newsmedia joining in the official line that all tariffs are destructive (a position they, strangely, don’t seem to hold regarding any other form of taxation), there is positive economic news on the international trade front every month.

How much news space, for example, has been devoted to the Trump administration’s ongoing negotiations with India, which now seem likely to pull India back out of China’s orbit and into the American orbit again? How much news space has been devoted to the US-Bangladesh trade deal, which should help Bangladesh pull even more LCC opportunities away from China, and could bolster the country’s economy so that they can crack down on the corruption that has long been endemic?

Democratic Party Corruption: Reporters have long thought of themselves as the fighters of corruption, whether they deserved the title or not. There has been a host of big stories over the years, in which federal investigators did the work, and newspapers rode their coattails through months of front-page coverage, from Teapot Dome to Watergate, from the Keating Five to Silver Shovel.

Over the past few months, tens of billions of dollars of scandals have been exposed, facilitated or covered up by Democrat state administrations. From the Somali daycare fraud of Minnesota to the home healthcare scandal of Los Angeles, these current cases are occurring in Democrat-run cities and states, under the very noses of past and future Democrat nominees for the presidency and vice presidency. Rational coverage – the kind of coverage such multibillion dollar fraud deserves, and the kind of coverage that such scandals would undoubtedly have received in the past – would destroy these politicians’ reputations. Might that be why the press doesn’t cover such scandals anymore?

There’s more, of course. In a nation of 350 million, in a world of 9 billion, there is always bound to be an avalanche of news worth covering, so there will always be valid stories that are missed due to space considerations. No news outlet can cover absolutely everything. There aren’t enough hours in the day or pages in the paper. They have to make choices.

But it is simply undeniable that the modern press has adopted a habit of elevating undeserving stories to a previously unseen level, crowding out not the less valid, but the more valid. The Nancy Guthrie disappearance epitomizes this problem.

Again, we all wish her well, and we all feel for her and her circle of friends and family, as they pray for her safe recovery.

But this near-complete news coverage of one single missing persons case, to the exclusion of so many valid news stories of far broader appeal, proves that conservative allegations about the news media are indeed on target.

There is real news, important news, that the public needs to know.

And the mainstream media seem to be more dedicated to the suppression of such news than to its publication.

Copyright 2026 John F. Di Leo