The 1980s and particularly 90s stranger danger panic was driven by national for-profit news organizations generally, and the programming demands of cable news s

The 1980s and particularly 90s stranger danger panic was driven by national for-profit news organizations generally, and the programming demands of cable news specifically. There is only so much real national news to go around, certainly not enough to fill 24/7 television programming, so these orgs turned to blowing up local crime stories to the national news market. On a national level there's always another missing child story so a national news org can keep these stories coming on a regular basis, creating a false impression of how common these crimes are. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome