Posted on 06/19/2005 10:19:51 AM PDT by Crackingham
As the search continues for Natalee Holloway in Aruba, the family of another missing woman expresses frustration. A year ago this week, a 24-year-old African-American woman named Tamika Huston of Spartanburg, S.C., was reported missing by her family. Most who know all about Holloway, probably haven't heard of Huston, although her family has tried everything it could to get national media attention.
According to FBI statistics, African-Americans and other minorities make up a larger portion of missing victims than the media represents. However, cases like Huston's often get little attention.
Huston's aunt, Rebkah Howard, who is a public relations professional, tried to develop national concern by having her family distribute fliers, hold a press conference, and create a Web site to get mass media attention, but the story was primarily ignored.
As the search continues for Holloway, who is white, an article in USA Today June 16 asks why the media doesn't show more concern about missing blacks, Hispanics and other minorities. While no one is suggesting that the media ignore Holloway's story, critics point to a trend.
Howard tells The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm she doesn't believe executive producers and newsroom staff consciously exclude persons of color, but notes it is important for the media to take a critical look at which cases they cover.
"What I believe is happening," Howard says, "is that networks have found a formula that has worked for them. And they tend to be about young, white attractive, middle- to upper-class women. And they continue to follow those stories. As one is resolved, they'll move on to the next one. I was met with a lot of resistance when I tried to get national attention for this case. It has been unfortunate."
Just recall the stories of Jennifer Wilbanks, the missing bride, Laci Peterson and Lori Hacking, the missing pregnant wives, and Elizabeth Smart, the young woman from Salt Lake City. They were all white, young, attractive, middle-class, American women.
As much as I hate to hear about more missing persons...this isn't the USSR. The press can choose each story on its own merits. For example...they may report more on a local drowning rather than a local shooting (for the bigger cities) because it is a bit more up lifting and such. The media has the freedom to report as many or as few of these cases as they want. So boo-fricken-hoo. :)
Well, maybe, but what's the remedy? Turn all of the cable and local channels over to 24/7 missing persons coverage, so everyone will be included?
"News" is a construct. It is whatever the media decides that it is.
Sadly this is true only a handful of missing get a full court press. Too bad, maybe they need a 24 hour missing person channel. God help these families.
Everything else is just gossip.
I think it's more about having an interesting story. Not many young women disappear from Aruba.
I personally would like to see the media do more in more of these cases, as it might help get them found. But, if it's not an interesting story the public can get interested in, they will soon drop it.
I just don't think it's a race issue. I don't see them covering stories of missing young men on any color. Is it a gender bias as well?
susie
sure they are equal, they are all missing...
telling the news what to cover and whatnot to cover is communism....
I think the lady has answered her own question. It's supposedly such an unfortunate common ocurrence in certain communities that it doesn't become a big story. Plus, if Holloway had disappeared from a college campus there would have been a spike in the news, then silence. Anyone remember the college girls disappearing in the midwest recently? I think in Wisconsin or Minnesota - see, I don't know much about them because I haven't seen it in the national news much.
It'd be nice if we could stop seeing racism behind every story.
I recommend forced quotas on the media for reporting missing minorities.
Once again people need to learn the meme, there's a reason it's called "TV News", the TV comes first. Photogenic people are more likely to wind up on TV when something interesting (bad or good) happens to them than non-photogenic people. Another big factor that plays into things is what else is going on in the world, nobody who wound up missing during the invasion of Iraq was going to wind up on TV unless it could be tied to the war in less than 6 seconds of TV time, this June has been a pretty slow news month, one of those months when the TV clowns are desperate to fill their air time (which doesn't change no matter how much or little is going on in the world) and a photogenic missing person is just what the TV ordered.
Pretty girls, especially blondes, will always more media exposure.
Exactly. The media CHOOSE what they will report. Apparently our oh-so-PC media CHOOSES to select out white middle-class women. I guess it beats reporting on the majority of missing people in this country - males.
; 0
...and it's ALL the fault of MEN. Men are the second most guilty beings...just under Bush.
"Most who know all about Holloway, probably haven't heard of Huston, although her family has tried everything it could to get national media attention."
Then maybe the MEDIA should be blamed.
WHY doesn't the MEDIA treat all missing people the same?
If this had been a black American tourist that disappeared, it would be just as big a story. Plus, Jessie Jackson would be on site, milking it for all its' worth. Jessie would walk away with a multimillion dollar beach home courtesy of the Aruban government just to get him to shut up.
Why the two face?
"As the search continues for Holloway, who is white, an article in USA Today June 16 asks why the media doesn't show more concern about missing blacks, Hispanics and other minorities."
Good question.
What's the answer?
Another factor to consider is the family and loved ones. The press are inherently some of the laziest people on earth, they don't like to go looking for stories they like stories to call them. What that means in the case of a missing person is holding a press conference, it's pretty rare to see the press covering anything that doesn't have press conferences.
Anyone complaining about media coverage on missing persons is in effect complaining about what the public wants to hear. Put on a story about someone old, ugly, stupid, and fat who's missing and see how many viewers lunge for their remotes. It's the same as for coverage of plane crashes and mass slaughters in foreign lands; if there's no Americans involved, nobody in the US cares. We want to know about people either like us or like we aspire to be, not some vanished snaggletoothed slattern.
...and now for the missing Boy Scout on Fox...
Funny thing is, I saw a photo of this girl and she was a cutie. I don't know what it is but we do know the left is racist to the bone.
She's as photogenic as they come. I can only presume the MSM is racist for not giving her case as much coverage.
She's very pretty.
WHY wasn't she given attention by the liberal media?
A tad racist, are they?
Why didn't you post the whole article? Or at least let us know it was an excerpt?
"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.)
"I would really hope that the media would just come to us and help us, says Huston's father, Anthony. "Getting national media coverage in the beginning, we really think that could have helped us out."
Howard notes the circumstances of her niece's disappearance from Spartanburg were very suspicious.
She explains, "We don't know exactly the date that Tamika was last seen, but we're estimating, based on the police investigation, it was between May 24 to the 26. In mid-June, her car was discovered at an apartment complex not too far from where she lived in a single-family home. A key that was left in her vehicle traced back to an apartment that was formerly lived in by an acquaintance of Tamika. They found blood in that apartment that matched Tamika's DNA and police continue to investigate at this point."
Tamika Huston's body has not been found.
Huston's family also expressed their sympathy for Natalee Holloway's family."
...and then there's my interest in the Nat'l Enquirer; but that's another story! ;-)
These cases I think get coverage because it's like a missing kitten. They LOVE to splash these photos of Natalee all over the screen because they draw the eye and then your heart sinks because you know she's probably dead. It's really sick. Sick, sick, sick.
The end of the article talks more about her disappearance.
I think the media probably IS racist, but I suspect there is something about the circumstances that prevented Tamika from getting her due. Natalee will continue to dominate the cycle until something big comes along and pushes her out. What that might be, I don't know. If something happened simultaneously with Tamikas disappearance, she would have been crowded out.
I can see that point of view. But the reason (God, am I defending the MSM?) is the asian coed was news because it was uncommon. Ok, I'm going to go wash my hands now for actually almost defending the MSM.
"She's very pretty. WHY wasn't she given attention by the liberal media? A tad racist, are they?"
YES. And they think that because the larger segment of their audience is white, that they aren't interested in hearing about stories unless the victim is white.
YES, they are racist.
It's not just the media. Do you think that the FBI sent eight agents to look for this girl?
I don't know.
I wasn't aware they could officially go to another country and investigate without the approval of another country in the first place.
They were talking about this on Fox News Watch yesterday. One of them mentioned the lack of coverage for all the missing men out there. When's the last time you seen a story on a missing man?
Everybody likes the story of a damsel in distress. Especially in an exotic place. More people (higher ratings) relate to a missing white girl than a black one. Needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Sad but true.
I think you're right.
I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but the MSM news business is just that, a business. And as a business, they report the news that will attract the most viewers, because the more viewers/readers they have, the more they can charge their advertisers. The majority of viewers who watch news programs and read news papers are white, so a story about a missing white woman will attract viewers/readers and a story about a missing minority woman will not.
Personally, it offends me that more Americans seem to be interested in the soap opera like lives of spoiled white women who are eventually found in Grey Hound bus stations in Albuquerque than they are in the lives of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who are currently in harms way.
But that’s just my opinion, and I could be wrong.
"If something happened simultaneously with Tamikas disappearance, she would have been crowded out."
That's a possibility. But I think it might have been picked up a few days later if she'd been a pretty blonde.
It hasn't occurred to anyone in the MSM that maybe the press would rather go to Aruba than Spartanburg.
I've been to Spartanburg... I'll take Aruba any day...
I guess one reason might be that there are nearly twice as many white or hispanic women missing.
Intensity of media coverage is not related so much to the appearance, gender or race of the missing person as it is to the unusual, surprising or mysterious circumstances surrounding the disappearance.
Also, like the rest of us, if the reporter(s) have intuitions about who might be a bad actor (Susan Smith, Scott Peterson, Mark Hacking, the Smart's handyman,) they desperately want to solve the mystery and we, the viewers, just hang on.
The difference between a B movie and a cliff-hanger. Sorry, but that is my take.
sp
And why are hispanics not listed as a minority?
But, wait a sec, they can't be racists - they're liberals and we all know that only Republicans are racists. I'm sooo confused.. ;-)
As someone noted on another thread on this theme:
Here we have the media whining about media bias.
I see media bias in their reporting on politics, business, governent, etc. I'm not holding my breath to see them writing and printing stories complaining about those biases
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