Letter to Dan Abrams, “The Abrams Report,” MSNBC

Mr. Abrams:

In last week’s “Your Rebuttal” you countered J. Doyle’s comparison of the amount of coverage given to Natalee Holloway’s disappearance versus the devastation of Hurricane Katrina with the remark that “it is hard to argue that we’re suggesting it is on a par” since you had done “weeks” of Katrina coverage.

At the time you made that statement, the number of weeks your show had done on Katrina was just about three. You’ve been covering Natalee Holloway’s disappearance for over three months, virtually non-stop except for the break caused by Hurricane Katrina. It’s been your lead story for much of that time, as well as a major story for Joe Scarborough, Rita Cosby, Larry King, Nancy Grace, and Greta van Sustern.

The question isn’t whether you’ve given Natalee as much time as Katrina. It’s a simple fact — based on the number of hours of coverage — that your show hasn’t spent even a fraction of the time on Katrina that you’ve spent on Natalee.

The fact that a major hurricane was about to hit the Gulf Coast of the United States wasn’t even mentioned in your show the Friday before the Hurricane. What was? Natalee Holloway. And that was true across the board for all of the people I mentioned above. You missed the legal problems for people forced to evacuate their homes, issues with lost public records, prisoner and sex offender transfers, all of that, because you chose to stick with the story of a girl who undoubtedly got murdered in Aruba. Last year there were 300 murders in New Orleans alone. Where were you then?