Why Did Nancy Grace Tell The Dad His Missing Kid Was Found Instead Of The Police?

I think we've reached full Truman Show horror.  

How did Nancy Grace learn the missing kid was
found before the kid's dad did? 

I say that because Nancy Grace, the haranguing HLN host, informed a father, live on the air last night, that his son who had been missing for 11 days had been found alive.

The Truman Show, you might remember, was that Jim Carrey movie in which a man is unwittingly the subject of a reality TV show and his wife, friends and neighbors are all in on the ruse.

The movie was a meditation on how the media could ultimately exploit someone to the extreme. 

So now we have Nancy Grace ambushing a guy by telling him his son had been found.  She then bombarded the stunned dad with a lot of questions, which he definitely seemed unprepared to answer, given the news he'd just received.

Hey, anything for ratings, right?

Now, I don't want the media to censor itself. The more information the better. And the public is served by informing us what the circumstances were with this kid. But the Grace episode was more about entertainment and gawking, not information.

And what about the police? I certainly expect law enforcement to be fully transparent in their investigations, and to let the public know exactly what is going on in terms of public safety.  

Charles Bothuell, 12, was found after
being missing 11 days. Lots of murky
circumstances surrounding how they
found him, and who knew what, when.  

But what happened to protocol here? Typically, when police learn something significant in an investigation, they inform the immediate family first, then tell the public what's going on.

How did Nancy Grace know the kid was found before the kid's father had any clue?  Did police feel like they were more beholden to Nancy Grace than the kid or his family?

Is it the job of police to help the public, or help Nancy Grace get a ratings coup?  

We don't know the full circumstances of this missing kid case yet. I'd like to hear more of an explanation from the police.

It is odd that he was found in his basement after people had been searching high and low for him for a week and a half, and had already searched the basement.

If the father is somehow culpable, I hope they charge him with a crime. If he is not guilty of anything, I hope that police, and especially Nancy Grace, go out of their way to make sure we all know that. 

However, if the father is innocent, will that be reported? Or maybe not, because the ratings associated with a report about an innocent dad would not be high enough to keep advertisers happy.