Two thought provoking posts and maybe they should talk to one another... Will, Dmac, Dan, and all you journalists out there - would you care to answer Cranky's questions?
The Disenchanted Forest: Latoyia's disappearance gets some national coverage:
... Carlson actually gets the big media picture and boldly admits it's all about ratings, and yet he completely misses a critical point: in cases of missing persons, time is of the essence. The media can still get great ratings by covering cases well past their expiration date without completely neglecting other emerging cases in the early stages of investigation. Would it really be so difficult and detrimental to their bottom line to use a small percentage of on-air time to discuss recent compelling cases in which additional media coverage could be helpful (especially cable news, which has been known to dedicate hours re-hashing the same information across multiple programs on a daily basis)?
Sadly, in the US, homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women. New and expectant mothers are nearly twice as likely to die from homicide as other women, even when adjusted for race and age. I have a hard time believe that the raw data analyzed for studies doesn't include a sizable number of dead suburbanites. If those in the media can, like Carlson, recognize and articulate these "feelings"/perceptions, they should be able to address them and still get the ratings they so desire all while, possibly, lighting a fire under an investigation and *gasp* reporting some actual news.
...I have two questions rattling around my little head:
1. Does the media really think that having an interest in, or being able to relate to, one type of victim necessarily translate into lack of interest in another?
2. When it comes to news, how hard can it be to decide which story is more newsworthy when the choice is a new case of a missing person of color or a older case you cover daily in which there's no substantive new information to report?
Will Bunch, in a related post, says Tucker spoke the truth: Tucker Carlson and MSNBC: Laughing at a missing, pregnant mom who's not from the suburbs:
If you live in Philadelphia, and you're the kind of person who knows about blogs, you also probably know by now all about the search for 24-year-old LaToyia Figueroa of West Philadelphia, who went missing 10 days ago and was ignored for 9 of those days by the same national media that's obsessed with missing white women, preferably blonde.
Yesterday, largely because of a campaign led by Philly blogger "Richard Cranium" of the popular website allspinzone.com, that started to change. The story got picked up by the big 3 cable news networks, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, it is the lead story on local news radio and upfront in the papers, and a reward fund for LaToyia's whereabouts is growing rapidly.
But something else came out because of the blogospehre's campaign on LaToyia's behalf, and it wasn't pretty.
It was the truth.
MSNBC's bow-tied, right wing pundit, Tucker Carlson of the widely unwatched "The Situation,"
and local boy turned stock tipster Jim Cramer, managed to "cover" the plight of the missing woman in the most disgusting manner possible......at least they were brutally honest, about the contempt that much (but trust us, not all) of the mainstream media feels toward the idea of covering missing women, let alone crime, from areas outside of the mostly lilly-white suburbs.
I missed the show, surprise,
I missed the show, surprise, surprise. But God bless capitalism. It's fine to justify racism and devalue human life based on economic background. Just chalk it all off to commercialism. "Racism sells, get over it." What a fabulous message to put out there.
brief comments
It's my last day at my old job, so I'm a little busy (read: lazy), but I will try to give some sort of an answer. Some caveats: I've primarily been a sports/arts journalist, and my work has been pretty much all print -- my TV experience consists of an appearance on Daily News Live.
It's a little hard to say what makes some stories (similar ones, even) more newsworthy than others. Could it be because somebody is white and suburban? Sure. I don't doubt that gender, race, class, religion, etc. all play a role. Natalee Holloway was a big story at first mainly because Aruba has been a kind of crime-free place for so long. The Latoya Figeroa case hit the national news because a bunch of people complained that it wasn't getting coverage.
I'd be willing to be that, the more people keep the story in media outlets' heads, the more coverage a story will get. Remember: editors and writers and producers are people, and they're not going to want to say to someone "Oh, we can't cover your missing baby, we have to do an in-depth report on 'Hagar the Horrible.'" (At least, I wouldn't want to.)
I think the lesson people can take out of the campaign to get Figeroa mentioned in the news is that talking to news producers and editors, posting on your blog, holding press conferences can get your story media attention. One way to get something in the news that isn't being covered is to hound the editor until they cover it. Hell, it's worked on me.
Anyway, I know that doesn't totally answer any questions, but I guess it's what I can contribute, since I don't know much about TV, and that seems to be what the original questions were about.
another angle
Note: I wrote a comment here about the investigation that I think is better left unasked, at least for now, at least by me. So I have deleted it.
As SpinDentist from All-Spin Zone reminds me, the only issue that is important right now is finding Latoyia.