Does the story of Baby Ayla – the missing toddler from Waterville, Maine – pull at your heartstrings?

Local police are calling her disappearance, reported on Dec. 16, a “missing child case.”

Do you hope the best for the little girl, yet at the same time expect the worst? (It’s a natural defense mechanism, don’t worry – we are entitled to be skeptics to a certain degree.)

Have you read all the news updates? Have you come to your own conclusions? Are you waiting for the case to continue to unfold?

And have you turned on Nancy Grace? She has made “Baby Ayla” her new cause celebre du jour this holiday season.

(Do you tune in to Nancy Grace? If so, why? If not, why not?)

But is Nancy Grace a champion of the missing, the abducted or the people whose voices have been stifled by some sort of injustice in the world?

Or is she just a fan of hearing her own voice being amplified over the cable airwaves?

Nancy Grace is debasing and selling out our ability to be sympathetic. In the world of Nancy Grace, every baby or female is “snatched” from a comfortable surrounding. Families are complicit in a crime in some way or another – and are talked down to by Nancy Grace for not being vigilant enough or protective enough.

And with every case, she wants the input and information from the local media.

At a local news organization in Maine, reporters were asked to speak about the Baby Ayla case on the air with Nancy Grace. No, correct that. Reporters in Maine have been pestered incessantly by her producers.

One reporter declined the invitation. Another even said something along the lines of, “I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

Is it worth a superficial career boost to be voiced over, talked down to and interrupted by Nancy Grace or any of her bombastic ilk? When, as a reporter, you’ve got a job to do?

And to anyone tuned in to Nancy Grace or Jane Velez-Mitchell’s interpretation and skewering of this case (or any others, for that matter), consider this. It might be best to spend less of your time being fed probabilities, theories, conjecture – all of which further disorient the truth of the matter – and spend more of your time adjusting your filter, deciding what’s real and evidentiary instead of what is driven and sensationalized in an effort to appeal as a low and common denominator.

Concentrate on the facts instead of relying on the rhetoric. Sometimes, as Nancy Grace shows us, it’s just too damn loud.