Petito’s disappearance on the trip and the subsequent discovery of her slain body Sept. 19 in a Wyoming national park became a national obsession, augmented by the later search for Laundrie in a Florida nature preserve.

Source: Gabby Petito’s parents sue Laundrie’s parents over killing

Like always, missing young, attractive, blue-eyed blonde females get saturation coverage by the media. The media largely doesn’t care about anyone else – in fact, research in 2021 found that missing white males receive almost no coverage.

We saw the same phenomena with the case of Sherri Papini, a beautiful blue-eyed blonde – who just this month was arrested and charged with having staged her own fake abduction and kidnapping.

Any “national obsession” is manufactured by the news media, which is incredibly biased in its coverage, favoring missing white women over women of color, and largely ignoring most males who go missing. The media is highly racist and sexist in how they cover “news”. They know these stories get eyeballs for advertisers and help stoke community fear.