You don’t need to have ever watched the “Today” show to be moved by the video in which the news anchor Savannah Guthrie pleads for her mother’s life.
It is likely the most urgent recording that the network host has ever produced. But it is not TV in the sense we are used to. That is, it is not highly produced or aesthetically polished. It is a raw appeal, and a prayer.
It is anguishing on a human level. And it is haunting for how it shows Guthrie vulnerable and open, in a way that we rarely see from media personalities, even in their most publicly candid moments.
In the video, which Guthrie released on Wednesday night, she sits with her siblings in front of a spare white wall, reading from a sheet of paper. They look distraught, tired, wrung-out.
Guthrie tells whoever might have abducted her missing mother, Nancy, that the family is ready to consider a ransom but needs convincing proof of life. She tells her mother that “You are a strong woman.” She offers prayers and references scripture, seeming to paraphrase 1 Thessalonians: “We pray without ceasing and we rejoice in advance for the day that we hold you in our arms again.”
The video is unsettling, of course, because of the horror of the case, in which Nancy Guthrie, 84, who has mobility issues and is in need of medication, disappeared last weekend. (Authorities in Arizona have said that they found concerning evidence at her house north of Tucson and are investigating the case as a kidnapping.)
But it is also striking to watch someone whom audiences have seen for years in the controlled and cheery environment of network TV, looking now like any worried daughter of a fragile mother in peril.
There is something about watching a nightmare befall someone you have never met, yet have spent years’ worth of mornings with. The relationship between morning hosts and their audience is an intimate one by design. They are news anchors but also companions, friends, emotional resonators. Evening news anchors broadcast at you; morning news hosts visit with you.
Other morning hosts have shared the crises and concerns of real life before. Katie Couric broadcast her colonoscopy on the “Today” show after the death of her husband from colon cancer. Robin Roberts of ABC revealed her breast cancer diagnosis and took viewers along on the journey of her treatment. Even Guthrie, last month, shared the story of her vocal cord surgery on “Today.”
But these moments of openness and vulnerability are planned and produced by professionals sharing stories on their own terms, on their turf. Even the personal revelations of non-journalist celebrities — movie stars, royals, politicians — usually come to us through the shepherding of interviewers and narrative-shapers.
Guthrie’s video collapses this distance. There is the austerity of the setting, far from the airy comfort of a morning talk set. There is the pinch in her face to hold back tears. There is the rough tremor in her voice. There is the direct address: “Mommy.”
That is not, of course, to say that the video is impromptu or without thought-through purpose. This sort of appeal to potential kidnappers is often done in coordination and consultation with law enforcement. And the use of new media in abduction cases has a history going back to Charles Lindbergh, who was persuaded to release home-movie footage for use in newsreels after the kidnapping of his infant son in 1932.
But Guthrie’s video is emphatically not polished or produced. The network-TV persona falls away. What’s more, unlike with even the most personal disclosures we’ve seen from public figures, we are not its principal audience.
Guthrie thanks viewers for their prayers for Nancy, “a kind, faithful, loyal, fiercely loving woman.” But then she shifts to address the possible abductor: “We want to hear from you.” And she speaks to her mother, who she hopes, but cannot know, is listening.
We are not being told a story here. We are simply watching a story unfold, powerless except to comment or click a heart button.
We are often reminded that media personalities, beyond the trappings of fame, wealth and power, are simply people like the rest of us. Sometimes that sounds like a platitude. This time it looked and felt horribly true.
James Poniewozik is the chief TV critic for The Times. He writes reviews and essays with an emphasis on television as it reflects a changing culture and politics.
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