Statement by Kww

In 2008, Renée Gielen prepared a documentary on the Natalee Holloway disappearance. It aired on TeleAruba on Nov 8, 2008. This documentary was covered in major Dutch and Antillean news sources, such as De Telegraaf [1], the Antillians Dagblad and the Amigoe. The documentary can still be viewed on various online video sources by searching under the titles "Unrevealed Timelines" and for Renée Gielen. Since copyright of those online copies are suspect, I'm not directly linking to them here. A legal DVD copy is available at bol.com. As a whole, the documentary is not usable as a source by Wikipedia: it took statements by subjects out of context and twisted them into a fairly bizarre conspiracy theory that no responsible news source took seriously.

However, the Amigoe, a regional newspaper publishing out of Curacao since 1883, with international offices throughout the former Netherlands Antilles, had the opportunity to review the raw interview tapes and published an analysis of statements by Gerold Dompig and Julia Renfro, two figures that were intimately involved in the search for Holloway. Gerold Dompig was the Deputy Chief of Police for Aruba and head investigator into the disappearance. Julia Renfro, head editor of Aruba Today and photographer for Bon Dia, acted as Beth Holloway's guide and assistant on the island during the early days of the investigation. These two individuals have been interviewed multiple times by multiple news sources, including NBC, CNN, Vanity Fair, and the Los Angeles Times. Their relationship to the case is indisputable, even being present in sources written by family members like Aruba: The Tragic Untold Story of Natalee Holloway and Corruption in Paradise. Their statements indicated that Beth Holloway and Jug Twitty were ready to evacuate their daughter from the island immediately and extra-legally if necessary, having secured the services of a medical evacuation jet. They also indicated, in material largely echoed by Vanity Fair, that Beth and Jug acted on rumors that Natalee was being held captive in a crack house.

Given that the Amigoe is the oldest and most established newspaper in the area, the material reviewed was not the suspect documentary but was the raw footage, the notability and relevance of the people making the statements is not in doubt, and the material is not particularly negative (most parents of means would have been willing to do anything possible to rescue their daughter from the situation that she was rumoured to be in), there isn't a BLP issue here.

Statement by others favoring this perspective

Statement by Overagainst

The Newslife: From Arkansas to Aruba, page 530: "No Aruban needed American media to tell them ...that Amigoe would defend Joran until the very end, if there ever was to be an ending".

Amigoe is the only source that is being referenced for the BLP. It reported on the interviews (done for a Renée Gielen 2008 documentary) with Renfro and Domig. In the Vanity Fair article it says Natalee's father was accused by Renfo of assaulting her. In Aruba: The Tragic Untold Story of Natalee Holloway and Corruption in Paradise page 184, it says that in October 26 2005 Dompig was quoted in an Aruban newspaper calling for an investigation into the money Natalee's mother was getting from the Natalee Holloway fund, and suggesting Natalee's mother knew where Natalee was, but was using her disappearance to make millions of dollars. That was basically the same theory propounded by the 2008 Renée Gielen documentary. So the theory in the documentary is Dompig's.

Dompig and Renfo have expressed certain views about Holloway's parents and the case that are not mainstream, and Amigoe's report on what they allege is the sole source for the Disappearance of Natalee Holloway reproducing their contentious allegations about Natalee' parents in the Amigoe article section, where it says "During the interviews, Renfro and Dompig ... indicate that...". In my opinion, for those allegations and innuedoes about Natalee's parents to be in a Wikipedia article (without any rebuttal whatsoever) there has to be additional sourcing for them. There has to be evidence that multiple reliable sources paid attention to these theories. This was a very heavily covered case in the American media and yet we only have Amigoe's reporting on the allegations. WP:BLPSOURCES "Material should not be added to an article when the only sourcing is tabloid journalism. When material is both verifiable and noteworthy, it will have appeared in more reliable sources". That concludes what I have to say about the Amigoe article section.

Kww said "The reason I listed diffs on multiple issues was to demonstrate the pattern. There's a reason I included the phrase "the particular section he is after at this point" in my description. Once this one is past, another will inevitably come up an result in the same interminable repetition." No, I have lost heart with trying to alter the other parts of the article because that is a matter of weight which is very difficult to demonstrate. However I'll explain what I think is a pattern of inappropriate weight in a single observation: the lede of Disappearance of Natalee Holloway mentions that Joran van der Sloot was the last to be seen with Natalee, but not that he murdered a girl in Peru 5 years after Natalee disappeared while with him. The editors who want me banned insist that the Peru murder by Joran van der Sloot, which is in the main body of the article and the most notable thing about the whole case, absolutely can not be in the lead.Overagainst (talk) 12:34, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Statement by others favoring this perspective

Summary by MarshalN20

Points to address

Based on reading the statements by Kww and Overagainst, and while still waiting on others, I will start listing here the main questions that will be asked at the WP:BLP/N (or other noticeboards) and/or RFCs. Remember that these are only questions, and I plan to add both of your perspectives when posting them for third-party discussion. The overall question is "Does the article on the Disappearance of Natalee Holloway comply with WP:BLP standards?" in order to better view this at the micro level, the following questions are important for the community to clear up:

1. Is the Amigoe newspaper a reliable source?
2. Does the Amigoe newspaper have a bias in the case of the Disappearance of Natalee Holloway?
3. Is it correct to present, in the article Disappearance of Natalee Holloway, the perspective of Gerold Dompig?
4. Does Gerold Dompig have a bias in the case of the Disappearance of Natalee Holloway?
5. Is it correct to present, in the article Disappearance of Natalee Holloway, the perspective of Julia Renfro?
6. Does Julia Renfro have a bias in the case of the Disappearance of Natalee Holloway?
7. Should Joran van der Sloot's later murder and conviction in Peru be noted in the lead of the Disappearance of Natalee Holloway article?
8. Should the effect of Joran van der Sloot's murder of Stephany Flores on the case of Natalee Holloway (such as changing perspectives from criminologists, the media, etc.) be stated in the section "Van der Sloot kills in Peru"?

Textual summary