"A damsel must be white. This requirement is nonnegotiable. It helps if her frame is of dimensions that breathless cable television reporters can credibly describe as 'petite,' and it also helps if she's the kind of woman who wouldn't really mind being called 'petite,' a woman with a good deal of princess in her personality. She must be attractive -- also nonnegotiable. Her economic status should be middle class or higher, but an exception can be made in the case of wartime (see: Jessica Lynch). Put all this together, and you get 24-7 coverage."
--Washington Post
Guess what? Another white girl is missing.
Once again, we are being reltentlessly innundated with the tragic case of a missing person. Little Shasta Groene has been found but the search is on for her missing brother, Dylan. Eighteen-year-old Natalee Holloway, the Alabama student who is still missing in Aruba. JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart, Jennifer Wilbanks, Laci Peterson, etc., the pattern is unmistakable. The recent case of Natalee Holloway in Aruba isn't even occurring in America — like there aren't enough missing white women in America so the media have to find missing white women abroad.
We hear complaints about how the media seems to jump all over stories about "missing white women" rather than missing black women, missing Latino women, or missing Asian women or indeed missing Anybody except white women/girls and children. The mainstream media seem to expend ever more time and resources covering every conceivable angle on stories of missing white women
than they do on stories of major international substance like the war in Iraq.
Does the media really only care about these people?
While watching cable news it occurred to me (and probably to numerous other non-whites) that in order to warrant substantial media coverage a missing person would need to have certain characteristics. For instance, definitely white, female helps a lot, and the best of all is attractive, well-to-do, pristine. Then you’ve got the formula for huge attention to your case.
It also was painfully obvious that day that none of the top stories that day dealt
with Iraq or the war on terrorism, nothing on the Downing Street Memo, or Guantanamo. Is the story of a missing person so much more
important that they have to use several news segments
every morning on their absence?
Now, most decent folk recognize the grief and suffering of the families of missing women and certainly such stories should not simply be ignored. There is a place and time for these stories to be reported on — with an emphasis on place
and time. The media, however, has gone completely topsy turvy in minimizing
everything else by focusing on these type of stories day after day after day to the exclusion of so much else that is either at least as important (missing non-white women) or far more important (Iraq).
The media doesn't leave a stone unturned or angle unreported-on when it comes to a story of a missing white woman One actually wishes the Media would turn such extensive investigative effort on resolving what is going on in Iraq these days.
Eugene Robinson (via Kevin Drum) writes about this today as well, calling it a
"Damsel in Distress" syndrome:
A damsel must be white. This requirement is
nonnegotiable. It helps if her frame is of dimensions
that breathless cable television reporters can credibly
describe as "petite," and it also helps if she's the
kind of woman who wouldn't really mind being called
"petite," a woman with a good deal of princess in her
personality. She must be attractive -- also
nonnegotiable. Her economic status should be middle
class or higher, but an exception can be made in the
case of wartime.
Put all this together, and you get 24-7 coverage. The disappearance of a man, or of a woman of color, can generate a brief flurry, but never the full damsel treatment. Whoever knew there was so much to report on about Aruba?
Whatever our ultimate reason for singling out these few unfortunate victims, among the thousands of Americans who are murdered or who vanish each year, the pattern of choosing only young, white, middle-class women or children for
the full damsel treatment says a lot about a nation that likes to believe it has consigned race and class to irrelevance.
According to FBI statistics and USA Today, men are more likely than women to be reported missing,and blacks make up a disproportionately large segment of the victims. However, you wouldn't know that from watching television, listening to the radio or reading national newspapers.
Since May 1, FBI statistics indicate there were 25,389 men and 22,200 women listed as missing. Of the total of missing women since May 1, 8,681 were minorities (this includes Asian, African-American, American Indian and other minorities except Hispanics.) This compares to 13,519 white and Hispanic women. (It is not clear how many of those are Hispanic.)
For their part, Cable news executives say they don't pick stories based on the race of the victims. "The stories that 'go national' all have a twist or an emotional aspect to them that make them interesting," said Bill Shine, senior vice president of programming at Fox News.
"When the Aruba story broke, I didn't know if she (Holloway) was white," said Mark Effron, vice president of news/daytime programming at MSNBC.
He said he saw a story about "a parent's worst nightmare."
Yes, say it again, so we can really believe it.
Some useful statistics from an AP report:
"Most of the missing adults tracked by the FBI are men. More than one-in-five of those abducted or kidnapped are black. But you might not get that impression from the news media. . . .
'Victims of a certain type'
Others say race has to be at least a subconscious factor:
• "Something is at work here, at a conscious or at
least subconscious level, that leads them to choose
victims of a certain type" to report about, said Eugene
Robinson, syndicated columnist and associate editor at
The Washington Post, who recently wrote about the issue.
• "Sometimes we become advocates for their families,"
said Philip Lerman, co-executive producer of America's
Most Wanted and a former editor at USA TODAY. "It's
stunning sometimes how hard it is to get the national
media interested when it's a minority."
Why would national media ignore minorities? Among the
most important reasons is a lack of diversity in
newsrooms, say Robinson, Lerman and Keith Woods, dean
of faculty at the Poynter Institute, a school for
journalists.
"I'm not complaining about the story out of Aruba. I'm
complaining about the stories that don't get told"
because many reporters, editors and news producers
identify more with people like them, who are white,
Woods said.
The American Society of Newspaper Editors estimates 13%
of journalists at newspapers are minorities (including
Hispanics). In TV newsrooms, minorities make up about
22% of the workforce, according to the Radio-Television
News Directors Association. About 32% of the U.S.
population is non-white or Hispanic.
Woods and others say the media mislead the public about
"typical" victims. FBI statistics show that men are
slightly more likely than women to be reported as
missing, and that blacks make up a disproportionately
large segment of the victims. As of May 1, there were
25,389 men in the FBI's database of active missing
persons cases, and 22,200 cases of women. Blacks
accounted for 13,860 cases, vs. 29,383 whites.
The media spotlight can distort news in other ways, too. Other international destinations are more dangerous than Aruba. The State Department warned in
April that 30 U.S. citizens had recently been kidnapped or murdered in Mexico.
Should the Media Be Even Covering Missing Persons Anyway
Obviously, the answer to why missing-person stories are covered by news is convenience, viewers and money.It is sensational, voyeuristic...police scanner news made popular by local stations and newspapers. It gets big ratings and lots more advertising revenue.
We all know we like to watch other people's pain. And if it's popular with consumers, the newsworthiness can always be argued by the media. They can always hide behind the veil that they're providing coverage of a story of interest to our viewers and readers.
But what is the value of thiis "news"?
Of course it is tragic, and, as stated before, interesting in a voyeuristic way. Like reality TV, only better if the apparently clean-cut family has skeletons in its closet. But where's the news value?
But then, let's just cut to the chase. In my opinion, missing-people stories are not worthy of national news coverage. Of course there are exceptions, but those cases should be held to a high standard and examined carefully before being covered.
Newsrooms should have some sort of criteria to judege the value that a missing-person story should have before being broadcast. And that coverage should be racially fair and balanced.
Let's face it, there are hundreds of reported missing-person cases. If newsrooms chose to, they could do nothing but missing-person stories.
Conclusion
As usual, we hear lots of complaints about this type of coverage but see noithing being done about it. It's time to think and complain for a bit then on to the next missing white girl/child case. So much for Media insight into it's own behavior.
Television executives, who receive much of the criticism, defend their coverage. They stress the same old tired line that cases such as the recent disappearance in Aruba of 18-year-old Natalee Holloway of Alabama are extraordinary, and would be newsworthy no matter her background.
So, to all you men, people of color and other undesirables out there: read the words of Tom Rosenstiel, Director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism:
"'To be blunt, blond white chicks who go missing get covered and poor, black, Hispanic or other people of color who go missing do not get covered. You're more likely to get coverage if you're attractive than if you're not.'"
As Washinton Post columnist Gene Robinson recently wrote
“Memo to ugly people: Be extra careful.”.
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