Extensive media coverage of missing white women

Missing white woman syndrome is a term used by social scientists[1][2][3] and media commentators to refer to extensive media coverage, especially in television,[4] of missing person cases involving young, white, upper-middle-class women or girls. The term is used to describe the Western media's[citation needed] disproportionate focus on upper-middle-class white women who disappear, compared to coverage of missing women of color, women of lower social classes and missing men or boys.[5][6] Although the term was coined in the context of missing person cases, it is sometimes used of coverage of other violent crimes. Instances have been cited in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and South Africa.[7]

PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill is said to be the originator of the phrase.[6] Charlton McIlwain defines the syndrome as white women occupying "a privileged role as violent crime victims in news media reporting", and concludes that missing white woman syndrome functions as a type of racial hierarchy in the cultural imagery of the West.[8] Eduardo Bonilla-Silva categorizes the racial component of missing white woman syndrome as a form of racial grammar, through which white supremacy is normalized by implicit or even invisible standards.[1]

Missing white woman syndrome has led to a number of right-wing tough on crime measures that were named for white women who disappeared and were subsequently found harmed.[9][10] In addition to race and class, factors such as supposed attractiveness, body size and youthfulness function as unfair criteria in the determination of newsworthiness in coverage of missing women.[11] News coverage of missing black women was more likely to focus on the victim's problems, such as abusive boyfriends or a troubled past, while coverage of white women tends to focus on their roles as mothers or daughters.[12]

Media coverage [ edit ]

United States [ edit ]

A study of news coverage of missing children found that African American missing children cases were significantly underrepresented when compared to national statistics. Female missing children were significantly underrepresented in national news reporting. The coverage of death cases for African American boys was significantly greater than expected. Coverage of non-African American female kidnapping cases was greater than expected.[13] A subsequent study found that girls from minority groups were the most under-represented in these missing-children news reports by a very large margin.[citation needed]

Zach Sommers, a sociologist at Northwestern University, noted that while there is a sizable body of research that shows that white people are more likely than people of color to appear in news coverage as victims of violent crime, there is relatively little when it comes to missing persons cases.[1] In 2013, Sommers cross-referenced the missing persons coverage of four national and local media outlets against the FBI's missing persons database. Sommers found black people received disproportionately less coverage than whites and men received disproportionately less coverage than women; Sommers could not directly assess the number of missing white women in the FBI files due to how the data was structured but concluded that there was circumstantial—although not statistically conclusive—evidence that white women received disproportionate coverage.[14][1] In the same study, professor Eduardo Bonilla-Silva theorised that the subtle standard of placing a premium on white lives in the news helps to maintain and reinforce a racial hierarchy with whites at the top. For example, black women are members of both a marginalized racial group and a marginalized gender group.[1] Crucially, though, black women have an "intersectional experience [that] is greater than the sum of racism and sexism". In other words, like white women, black women are subject to sexism, but the form of that sexism differs for black women because of the compounding effects of racial discrimination; with missing white woman syndrome being a pertinent manifestation of this social phenomenon.[14][1] Some sociologists have argued that the tone of media coverage for black female victims differs markedly from coverage of white female victims in that the former are more likely to be blamed for purportedly putting themselves in harm's way, either knowingly or unknowingly. Victim blaming in this context reinforces the notion that black female victims are not only less innocent, but also less worthy of rescue relative to white women.[1] Other observers note the lack of publicity given to black female victims of police brutality in news coverage, attributing the silence to a tradition of "sexism and patriarchy" in American society.[1]

A report that aired on CNN noted the differences between the level of media coverage given to Caucasian women like Laci Peterson and Natalee Holloway, who disappeared in 2002 and 2005 respectively, and LaToyia Figueroa, a pregnant Black Hispanic woman. Figueroa disappeared in Philadelphia the same year Holloway disappeared. Figueroa and her unborn daughter were found murdered.[15] The San Francisco Chronicle published an article detailing the disparity between the coverage of the Peterson case and that of Evelyn Hernandez, a Hispanic woman who was nine months pregnant when she disappeared in 2002.[16]

Kym Pasqualini, president of the National Center for Missing Adults, observed that media outlets tend to focus on "damsels in distress"—typically, affluent young white women and teenagers.[17]

In a 2016 Esquire article about the disappearance of Tiffany Whitton, journalist Tom Junod observed that white women of lower social status such as Whitton, a 26-year-old unemployed drug addict who was on parole, do not get much media attention as "media outlets are ruthlessly selective, and they tend to prefer women who are white, pretty, and, above all, innocent." Whitton's mother stated that producers of shows like Nancy Grace told her they weren't interested in her daughter's case.[18] Dr. Cory L. Armstrong wrote in The Washington Post, "the pattern of choosing only young, white, middle-class women for the full damsel treatment says a lot about a nation that likes to believe it has consigned race and class to irrelevance."[6]

Canada [ edit ]

According to a study published in The Law and Society Association, aboriginal women who go missing in Canada receive 27 times less news coverage than white women; they also receive "dispassionate and less-detailed, headlines, articles, and images".[19]

United Kingdom [ edit ]

In January 2006, the (London) Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair accused the media of ‘institutional racism’ in its reporting of murders. He contrasted the reporting of the death of the male white lawyer Tom ap Rhys Price with the murder of the male Asian builders’ merchant Balbir Matharu. He said ‘murders in minority communities do not seem to interest the mainstream media’. He said that the death of Damilola Taylor (a 10-year-old black boy) was clearly an exception to this. He said he had been surprised at how much coverage the murders of two 10-year-old white girls in Soham had received. He did not mention any white women.[20][21][22]

University of Leicester Criminology Professor Yvonne Jewkes cites the murder of Milly Dowler, the murder of Sarah Payne, and the Soham murders as examples of "eminently newsworthy stories" about girls from "respectable" middle-class families and backgrounds whose parents used the news media effectively.[23] She writes that, in contrast, the killing of Damilola Taylor, a 10-year-old boy from Nigeria, initially received little news coverage, with reports initially concentrating upon street crime levels and community policing in London, and largely ignoring the victim. Even when Damilola's father flew into the UK from Nigeria to make press statements and television appearances, the level of public outcry did not, Jewkes asserts, reach "the near hysterical outpourings of anger and sadness that accompanied the deaths of Sarah, Milly, Holly, and Jessica".[23] However, according to the BBC, the killing of Damilola Taylor had shocked the UK.[24]

Two cases of missing white girl syndrome that have been given as contrasting examples: the murder of Hannah Williams and the murder of Danielle Jones (both were white). It was suggested that Jones received more coverage than Williams because Jones was a middle-class schoolgirl, whilst Williams was from a working-class background with a stud in her nose and estranged parents.[25] Another explanation for the difference in the coverage has been given: the eroticisation of the victim by news reports about a sexual relationship between Jones and her murderer (who was her uncle).[26]

South Africa [ edit ]

Sandile Memela, chief director for social cohesion at South Africa's Department of Arts and Culture, noted amidst the Oscar Pistorius trial that there existed substantial differences between how media outlets reported on the murders of Reeva Steenkamp and Zanele Khumalo; two South African models, respectively white and black, who had been murdered by their boyfriends under nearly identical circumstances.[27] Memela asserted that the discrepancy between the media coverage of the Steenkamp and Khumala murders amounted to "structural racism" within South African society, and stated: "As a country we seem to have chosen to ignore the agony, pain and suffering of the Khumalo family for no other reason than that they are black."[27]

On September 11, 2014, the South African news network SABC3 aired an investigative report which raised concerns around the "Missing White Woman Syndrome"; where the death of Steenkamp was juxtaposed with the death of Zanele Khumalo.[7]

Other alleged cases of disproportionate media interest [ edit ]

Jessica Lynch [ edit ]

Social commentaries pointed to media bias in the coverage of soldier Jessica Lynch versus that of her fellow soldiers, Shoshana Johnson and Lori Piestewa. All three were ambushed in the same attack during the Iraq War on March 23, 2003, with Piestewa being killed and Lynch and Johnson being injured and taken prisoner. Lynch, a young, blonde, white woman, received far more media coverage than Johnson (a black woman and a single mother) and Piestewa (a Hopi from an impoverished background, and also a single mother), with media critics suggesting that the media gave more attention to the woman with whom audiences supposedly more readily identify.[28][29]

Lynch herself leveled harsh criticism at this disproportionate coverage that focused only on her, stating in a congressional testimony before the United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:

I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary. People like Lori Piestewa and First Sergeant Dowdy who picked up fellow soldiers in harm's way. Or people like Patrick Miller and Sergeant Donald Walters who actually fought until the very end. The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate tales.[30]

Presumed kidnapping of "blonde angel" in Greece [ edit ]

In October 2013, a girl estimated to be about 4 years of age was found in the custody of a Roma couple in Greece and was presumed to have been abducted. The story about the "blonde angel" and the search for her biological parents received international media coverage. A Romani rights activist commented on the case to say "imagine if the situation were reversed and the children were brown and the parents were white."[31][32][33][34] The child was later identified as Maria Ruseva. Her biological mother was a Bulgarian Roma who gave Maria up for adoption.[35]

Murder trial defendants [ edit ]

Critics have also cited excessive media coverage of murder trials where the defendant is female, white, young and attractive, and included them along with Missing White Woman Syndrome instances in an all-encompassing narrative nicknamed the "woman in jeopardy" or "damsel in distress" genre. In such cases, the media will focus on the accused, rather than the victim as in Missing White Woman Syndrome cases, and they will be more ambiguous about their guilt than in other criminal cases regardless of evidence. Cited examples include Amanda Knox, Jodi Arias and Casey Anthony.[36]

Cited instances [ edit ]

The following missing person cases have been cited as instances of missing white woman syndrome; media commentators on the phenomenon regard them as garnering a disproportionate level of media coverage relative to contemporary cases involving missing girls or women of non-white ethnicities, and missing males of all ethnicities. The date of death or disappearance is given in parentheses.

Contemporary cases claimed not to have received comparable attention [ edit ]

The following missing person cases have been expressly compared to contemporary missing person cases labeled as examples of "Missing White Woman Syndrome", in order to highlight differences in coverage between them. The date of death or disappearance is given in parentheses.

See also [ edit ]

References [ edit ]

Further reading [ edit ]