**The column below represents the personal views of the student journalist.
The television flashed suddenly – a news story had just come out reading the name “Gabby Petitio.” A sudden surge of videos came out on tiktok, everyone hooked to their phone, always waiting for another update on the case. Viewers started to study her every moment and study what was happening to her before the murder reading into each little thing they noticed. For the viewers, this case was a show unfolding episode by episode but for her family it was a traumatic event that was turned into the public’s entertainment.
While Gabby’s parents began to grieve and finally start to grow while still missing her, the media was still profiting off of new angles when the case was solved. This case shows the line being blurred between creating awareness and exploitation, transforming the real families feelings into content for their gain.
The victims and the family members that have been exposed to many of the tragic events that have taken place involving them. Many of these people want to create conspiracies within the different cases which makes the trauma appear again. The victims of these heinous crimes are being used by major production companies and influencers to make money or get a bigger following.
In 2022 a movie adaptation was made by Lifetime TV about the Gabby Petitio case which sought immediate disapproval by the family of Petitio. Petitio’s mother made a comment about the movie she had started that they were not in agreement about and sought out a plea to get the film cancelled, claiming it wasn’t the right time which triggered their grief. Ryan Murphy’s true crime anthology has made approximately 341 million dollars as of early 2023, according to Parrot Analytics.
The hashtag that stated “#GabbyPetito’ gained hundreds of millions of views on tiktok, this was immediately covered by major content creators and the want to be detectives on tiktok, according to media reports. The case was investigated by many online creating different narratives and ideals that they thought would be true which even came with ideals that Gabby was in the wrong creating new found grief.
In 2022 a brutal heinous mass muder took place in an off campus house near the University of Idaho. Four young lives were taken that night and two left traumatized for life, that night it seemed that six lives had been taken. Even though two victims survived they had lost a great part of their memories and innocence. The media has picked this case up as soon as it has hit the big screens. As soon as the media got wind that there were two other survivors they began to criticize the two survivors. The media accused the girls of knowing what was going to happen and not wanting to help just letting it happen when in reality they were beyond terrified.
Twenty percent of the top-searched shows on Apple podcasts, and curated recommendation lists, in the U.S. were true crime shows, according to the Business Journal, in 2021.Many people who watch or listen to these podcasts never expect for them to be the victims, these podcast are frequently used for money and viewer entertainment. One of the surviving victims Bethany Funke stated in her impact statement she faced public backlash and scrutiny whilst trying to grief privately.
Many people will disagree with this claim stating that the major companies are just trying to spread awareness and get the victims names out. While yes, some may come with good intentions others may not. Victims and the family members of these crimes have come forward saying that they didn’t want or approve these things, using the victims name as vein.
As the television surges with a new story of another victim we ponder about the crimes that took place for this person’s life to be taken. The tragic murders of Gabby Petitio, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernod, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves have been used as a toy for the media to make profit off of. Spread awareness of these malicious crimes and not lies about what truly happened.