THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2026
Things go downhill from there: The New York Times has finally reported what Ashleigh Banfield said.
We refer to what Banfield said, two weeks ago, about Nancy Guthrie's disappearance.
Should the New York Times have done that? We can't say that the answer is obvious. We can tell you this:
Over the course of the past few weeks, much of the foolishness in the "cable news" pseudo-discussion has involved an obvious fact. We refer to the fact that anchors and their endless streams of useless experts weren't allowed to go anywhere near this awkward topic.
For whatever reason, the Times has finally broken the wall of silence. It did so yesterday, in this report about "rampant speculation" concerning this unsolved crime:
In Guthrie Mystery, Rampant Speculation Is Like ‘Salt on the Open Wound’
[...]
The spotlight on the case has led to tens of thousands of tips, the authorities have said. But the accompanying conjecture has complicated an already difficult investigation and has stung Ms. Guthrie’s grieving family.
The assertion that Ms. Guthrie’s son-in-law was, or could be, the “prime suspect,” as the news anchor and podcast host Ashleigh Banfield put it, risked endangering law enforcement officials’ delicate relationship with the Guthrie family, a key source of information, Sheriff Nanos said. Ms. Banfield has defended her report and maintained that the son-in-law was the focus of investigators at the time.
Such speculation has also inspired a flood of baseless tips, the sheriff added, which has distracted officers from more credible clues.
Say what? Nancy Guthrie’s son-in-law was, or could be, the “prime suspect?"
In fact, Banfield said that early on. Yesterday, for better or worse, the Times chose to report that fact.
Having said that, is it true? Was Nancy Guthrie's son-in-law ever the "prime suspect" in this matter? Was he ever any kind of a "suspect" at all? Should he have been a "suspect," or perhaps some sort of "person of interest?"
We can't answer those questions! We can perhaps tell you this:
Once the Times finally decided, for whatever reason, to report what Banfield said, it probably shouldn't have doctored other facts to convey the impression that her claim has been abandoned.
In fact, as you can see in this report, Banfield reaffirmed her claim, just last Thursday, in a podcast interview with Dan Abrams. Her claim may be right or her claim may be wrong—but, whether rightly or wrongly, her claim has not been abandoned
Abrams is perfectly sane. He decided to give Banfield a fairly high-end platform. She told him that her unnamed law enforcement source says his assertion stands.
Her source may be completely wrong; we have no way of knowing. There may not even be any such source! How are we supposed to know?
That said, law enforcement did conduct at least one three-hour, night-time search of the home of the person in question, and they apparently did return, a few days later, to search the woods around that house:
As we noted last week, much of the inanity of the round-the-clock cable discussions of this crime has involved the refusal of CNN and the Fox News Channel to come to terms with those superficially puzzling facts.
In fact, an in-law's house had been extensively searched, as was the surrounding area. Last week, cable hosts kept noting those facts, then throwing to their expert guests for comment.
The expert guests would then filibuster on some unrelated topic, after which the cable hosts would pretend that they hadn't heard the expert guest performing an obvious dodge.
Why did they search the in-law's house? Again and again, night after night, our "journalists" kept refusing to speculate or say or admit that the question existed. They speculated about everything else, but they performed an endless series of obvious dives concerning that obvious question.
Is "true crime" reporting extremely good for cable news ratings and profits? CNN and Fox went all in on round the clock pseudo coverage, but both channels had plainly decreed that the search of the in-law's environs should be reported but could not be explained, not even provisionally.
That made for an endless series of ridiculous non-exchange exchanges. Yesterday, along came the New York Times, and when it finally reported what Banfield has said, it incorrectly made it sound like her claim has been discarded.
Journalistically, this has been a clownish cable performance pretty much all the way down.
For starters, the round the clock cable coverage never made journalistic sense. That said, cable news is largely entertainment and agitprop under current arrangements, a fact which has become that much clearer as this journalistic charade has unfolded.
We feel sorry for all involved in this horrible unsolved crime. The "journalism" has largely been an extended charade about a tragic event.
To be clear, we don't know if Banfield's report was correct; we don't have the slightest idea. That said, cable news truly seems to love to yammer, to burn the long hours away.
