How do I get the news involved with a missing person report?

Question

My friend, an autistic 17-year-old, has gone missing. I've recently come to the conclusion that he has a disability, he's been missing for about a week, and I'm starting to think we should get the local media involved. Who do you think I should go to for that?

Answer 1

The first thing you need to do is make sure you have a police report filed.  A week is long time for someone with a disability to be missing.  I hope that this has already been done and was done early.  

I can't speak for all TV stations but the ones in the market I work in don't take missing person information from the general public because there are lot of people out there that want to be missing.  We will run missing persons if it's given to us by the police investigating the report.  Usually they relay this to us when they feel someone is in some kind of danger.  This case, if the information is correct, sounds like it would easily fall into this category.  Sometimes family and friends have to  push the police to make contact with the media.  Once the media has been contacted by the police you could contact the media with more pictures,  vigils,   searches, or any other events that might be happening in relation to the missing person. I've seen cases get quite a bit of coverage just because family and friends were so active in looking for the missing person themselves.  

If the missing  person remains missing follow up with police to keep the media informed.  

Good luck and hope this helps,

Answer 2

have they already gone to the police that's the first thing to do...

file report if they did this I think most police reports are available.

Then I would call and ask a reporter what to do call the news station.Make sure you have all his info height ,weight,pictures.phone numbers for contact family info.

good luck

My heart goes out to the people who cant find loved ones.

tons of kids go missing and their pictures never end up on tv...but i would make sure local news stations know with current pictures...

call newspaper

make sure you run off fliers for gas stations ,restaurants etc.