The Rocket

Issue date: 1/25/08 Section: Opinion

As far as I'm concerned, there are only three stories on the news anymore.

They revolve around the election, the economy and missing white women.

I know that statement might make a few of you feel uncomfortable, but I think it's an issue that needs to be addressed.

I'm sick and tired of turning on the TV and hearing some special about a missing woman who wandered off into the mean streets of Detroit at 3 a.m., half-naked and falling-down drunk, who hasn't been heard from again. Apparently the disappearance of a drunken woman will captivate just about any audience.

Now, notice that these women have to be semi-attractive, white, and middle- to upper-class. CNN doesn't care about a homely Latino woman who lives in the barrio and goes missing.

No, they just hope that Mexicans kidnapped her and took her back to the homeland.

Missing White Woman Syndrome is an affliction of the news media that not only entertains viewers, but also sells newspapers. I can't tell you how many pictures I've seen of the missing high school graduate, Natalee Holloway, plastered all over tabloids. You rarely, if ever, see in the news a "woman of color" who has gone missing.

What also bothers me on the news is that there are two stories revolving around women with the last name of "Peterson." Apparently, if you marry someone named Peterson and take their name, chances are you'll go missing and likely wind up dead, and the news will show the story for months on end.

But nothing captivates an audience more than missing white female children. If they disappear, where will the future generations of "damsels in distress" come from? We can't have the degenerates of the world kidnapping our pretty Caucasian spawn and soiling the genetic pool for the generations to come.

Take the case of Madeline McCann, for instance. This is a missing white girl who was on holiday with her parents in Portugal. She disappeared and has not been seen since. Now, apparently almost 800,000 children are reported missing each year. A lot of these children are kidnapped by strangers, and a lot of them are never heard from again.

It's a disheartening statistic, and no one ever wants their children to end up like this, but all I want to know is why do some children get so much media coverage while others never get airtime at all?

I think it is largely connected to race and affluence. Children whose parents can afford to pull publicity stunts can get on the news. If the child is attractive and white, all the better. The news media need to take into consideration the bias that they propagate in their coverage of missing-persons cases. Not only are minorities underrepresented, males are, too. I don't see how anyone could see this as fair, but it's a sad reality of the media in general.

I suppose the way we treat missing-persons cases only serves to help the kidnappers get away with the deed. They know if they kidnap white women, the media will be all over the story like white on rice.

Other cases get ignored, and largely turn into "cold cases" that often go unsolved. Perhaps we shouldn't make it that easy for criminals.

But until the media take into consideration the kind of news they put forth, we will just have to deal with the bias. After all, it took the United States until 2000 for all of the states to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. day, so I highly doubt some of us are even aware of the prejudice that still exists in the country.


Lisbeth Wells-Pratt is a sophomore creative writing major and a regular contributor to The Rocket.

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