Media 'Missing White Woman syndrome'

[EpyonXero]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22441124#

9 May 2013 Last updated at 04:23 ET

Cleveland abductions: Do white victims get more attention?
By Tara McKelvey

Three young women disappeared in Cleveland. Media coverage of their cases illustrates stereotypes about race.

Charles Ramsey heard someone screaming in a nearby house. Luckily, he managed to help the woman, Amanda Berry, who was in distress.

Because of his efforts, she, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight escaped from the house in Cleveland where they were held captive for a decade or more.

"I knew something was wrong when a little, pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms," Ramsey said later.

"Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway."

Berry (right) is white - and her case drew twice as much newspaper coverage as that of DeJesus
As it turned out, Ramsey's assessment was a twist on what is known among media critics as the Missing White Woman Syndrome.

Charlton McIlwain, a professor at New York University and the author of Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in US Political Campaigns, defines the syndrome: "White women occupy a privileged role as violent crime victims in news media reporting."

In other words, the victim is white and middle class. Ideally, she is saved - by a white guy.

"Our victims are colour-coded," says McIlwain. A proper victim is one who looks like a journalist, he says.

"Research shows that in terms of crime victims, they are people who we view as being like us - like those who are covering the events or reading about them," he says.

"Our national ideal of who is vulnerable - and who holds victim status - are those who are white and female."

The perception of victimhood is partly a media creation.

In truth, nearly half of those individuals who go missing in the US are not white - though one might not know that from the news coverage.

Berry was abducted in April 2003 and DeJesus a year later. They were children when they vanished, and their families were desperate to find them.

Yet the coverage of their abductions was dramatically different.

In Cleveland, the newspaper stories were mainly about the white girl.

Reporters for the Cleveland Plain Dealer have covered the abductions for years
In the 10 years Berry was missing, the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper published 36 articles about her, according to a search of electronic news archive Lexis-Nexis.

During the nine-year period that DeJesus, who is Hispanic, was missing, the newspaper published 19 articles about her case.

The coverage of these two cases reflects an overall trend in the media.

According to a 2010 academic study, roughly 80% of the news coverage about missing children is devoted to victims who are not black, while only 20% is given to children who are black.

The breakdown in media coverage does not reflect reality. "We have a sort of racial hierarchy," says McIlwain.

The coverage of violent crime and of people who have disappeared is biased and hurtful, says Natalie Wilson, co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation, which fights racial stereotypes in the media.

She first came across the stereotypes in crime reporting when she heard about a 24-year-old black woman, Tamika Huston, who went missing in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 2004.

Journalists seemed indifferent.

"The family really struggled to get any coverage whatsoever," says Wilson.

Wilson knows she cannot change the outcome of these cases. Many end in tragedy. More than a year after Huston's disappearance, a former boyfriend pleaded guilty to her murder.

Yet at least the story has been reported - and her family knows what happened to her.

In some cases, it takes years to sort out the truth.

Some families who have lost a loved one only manage with help from an organisation like the Black and Missing Foundation or from a prominent activist.

Stephen Lawrence, 19, was stabbed by white thugs who used a racial slur in London in April 1993. His murder hardly caused a stir in the national media. After a fortnight, Stephen's family held a press conference to complain not enough was being done by police to catch the killers. Then Nelson Mandela got involved.

Last year the killers, Gary Dobson and David Norris, were sentenced to life in prison for the killing.

Experts say that all too often when crimes are committed against people of colour the cases remain unsolved. And no one except their families seems to care.

The case in Cleveland shone a spotlight on the cases of missing children.

Experts hope that this will make more people pay attention to those who have disappeared, regardless of the colour of their skin.

Investigators searched the house in Cleveland where the women were held
Indeed, the story may help to remind journalists - and their audiences - that crime cuts across racial lines. It may have another positive aspect, too.

Charles Ramsey helped to save Berry, DeJesus and Knight from their prison. He was also blunt.

"Ramsey just called it like he saw it," says Farai Chideya, author of The Color of Our Future: Race in the 21st Century.

"People say, 'Wow, he's representing our race, and he's doing something really awesome - but why can't he comb his hair?'

"I think it's healthy to expand the notion of what a good black man is. You don't have to have a full set of teeth to be a hero."

You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook

[shmike]

Yawn.

Why no mention of Knight in the article?

Oh yeah, because she's white but doesn't align with the article's "findings".

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013...and-woman?lite

[goof2]

From the article: "The coverage of these two cases reflects an overall trend in the media.

According to a 2010 academic study, roughly 80% of the news coverage about missing children is devoted to victims who are not black, while only 20% is given to children who are black.

The breakdown in media coverage does not reflect reality. "We have a sort of racial hierarchy," says McIlwain."


OK, so 20% of coverage is devoted to kidnapped black children. What is the "reality" that the media's coverage does not reflect? I didn't see anything in the article that put this statistic in context. Lets consider demographics in the US where blacks make up 12-13% of the population. If kidnappings of black children occur at a similar rate these kidnappings apparently get significantly more coverage than what is reflected in reality. They would be toward the top of McIlwain's "racial hierarchy".

On the other hand if black children are being kidnapped significantly more often than population distribution suggests (would need to be well over 20% of cases to indicate skewed coverage) the better question would likely be why the hell are so many black kids getting kidnapped.

[EpyonXero]

Originally Posted by shmike

Yawn.

Why no mention of Knight in the article?

Oh yeah, because she's white but doesn't align with the article's "findings".

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013...and-woman?lite

Michelle Knight was 20 years old when she went missing and the her family assumed she simply left. This article compared the two underaged victims as you would expect both of them to be treated similarly as missing teenagers.

[EpyonXero]

Originally Posted by goof2

From the article: "The coverage of these two cases reflects an overall trend in the media.

According to a 2010 academic study, roughly 80% of the news coverage about missing children is devoted to victims who are not black, while only 20% is given to children who are black.

The breakdown in media coverage does not reflect reality. "We have a sort of racial hierarchy," says McIlwain."


OK, so 20% of coverage is devoted to kidnapped black children. What is the "reality" that the media's coverage does not reflect? I didn't see anything in the article that put this statistic in context. Lets consider demographics in the US where blacks make up 12-13% of the population. If kidnappings of black children occur at a similar rate these kidnappings apparently get significantly more coverage than what is reflected in reality. They would be toward the top of McIlwain's "racial hierarchy".

On the other hand if black children are being kidnapped significantly more often than population distribution suggests (would need to be well over 20% of cases to indicate skewed coverage) the better question would likely be why the hell are so many black kids getting kidnapped.

It states that "nearly half of those individuals who go missing in the US are not white "

[fatbuckRTO]

Originally Posted by goof2

From the article: "The coverage of these two cases reflects an overall trend in the media.

<many good points>

On the other hand if black children are being kidnapped significantly more often than population distribution suggests (would need to be well over 20% of cases to indicate skewed coverage) the better question would likely be why the hell are so many black kids getting kidnapped.

Agreed.

[shmike]

Originally Posted by EpyonXero

Michelle Knight was 20 years old when she went missing and the her family assumed she simply left. This article compared the two underaged victims as you would expect both of them to be treated similarly as missing teenagers.

The cops assumed she left and convinced much of her family of the same.

[EpyonXero]

From the FBI NCIC Missing Person and Unidentified Person Statistics for 2010:


http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nci...stics-for-2010

Out of a total of 565,692 missing persons under the age of 18; 314,117 were white. Thats 55%.

For 2012:
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nci...stics-for-2012

Total under 18: 497,327; Whites: 288,899; 58%

[EpyonXero]

Originally Posted by shmike

The cops assumed she left and convinced much of her family of the same.

She was an adult and there was reason to believe shed left on her own. Its an apple to oranges comparison.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/201..._that_she.html

You can understand why, at first, Michelle Knight’s disappearance might not have struck the police as particularly suspicious. Knight was a legal adult when she vanished, and there was nothing stopping her from leaving home and severing all family connections. What’s more, the police report into her disappearance notes that Knight “had a mental condition and frequently was confused by her surroundings,” which perhaps led them to believe she might have wandered off. News reports indicate that most of Knight’s family members believed that she left of her own accord, which means that—her mother’s flyers notwithstanding—there probably wasn’t much family pressure on police to advance the investigation.

If Knight had been a minor when she vanished, then her case would undoubtedly have received more police attention. As I wrote earlier today, a 14-year-old girl named Ashley Summers disappeared from west Cleveland in 2007 after a fight with her family. Though she was deemed a runaway at the time, the investigation into her disappearance nevertheless continued, and her case was consistently mentioned in connection with those of Berry and DeJesus.

Why wasn’t Knight linked with the other missing girls? In hindsight, it seems clear that the Cleveland police should have done more to look for her, especially considering the subsequent disappearances of Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus from the exact same neighborhood where Knight was last seen. To be sure, we still don’t have all that much information about the case, and it’s possible the police did in fact tie the three disappearances together. But at this point, it looks like Michelle Knight slipped through the cracks.

[goof2]

Originally Posted by EpyonXero

It states that "nearly half of those individuals who go missing in the US are not white "

Which is irrelevant considering the only measure of coverage the article gives is the distribution between black and not black.