The Black And Missing Foundation Featured On Nightline!

Don't forget about us!

The talk about the three women who were held captive in Cleveland by Ariel Castro still leaves unanswered questions.

Why did it take so long for the junk food media to cover this?

Even though Gina DeJesus were mentioned by the local Cleveland media, her disappearance was overshadowed by the ongoing coverage of Natalee Holloway.

Michelle Knight and Amanda Berry were mentioned heavily by the local news. Even though Knight was a runaway, she didn't get the amount of coverage Berry gotten. It took over 10 years to find the young women being held in the house of a former bus driver and accused rapist.

Niqui McCowan still missing and the junk food media rarely covers her disappearance.

In my community, we barely get coverage of Niqui McCowan, a Richmond, Indiana woman who went missing after she went to a local laundromat. She was to get married and had family ties in my community.

There are limited leads to the case and people are not giving up hope for her safe return.

A few years back my local junk food media news programs were focused on a Xenia, Ohio woman named Tiffany Tehan, a new mom who was lasted seen in a Dayton, Ohio convenience store with a man. The man was named Tre Hutcherson, a divorce man who fell in love with her and told Tiffany to leave her husband. They've fled to Florida before they were caught by the U.S. Marshals. The woman had to pay a hefty sum for the coverage by local authorities. But to this day they've maintained their love for one another. Tehan divorced her husband and remarried Hutcherson.

Hutcheson and Tehan ended up have a child together. Tehan shares custody of her first child with the ex-husband.

Tiffany Tehan, a runaway married woman took off with her lover. The junk food media covered her disappearance and her marriage to her boyfriend Tre Hutcherson.

That managed to get national attention. And it turned out a happy ending in a negative way though. But still while I can remember the times they've covered Tifanny Tehan, there's times they've never said a word about Niqui McCowan.

Again, we here at Journal de la Reyna send our prayers to families of all missing people. We hope they've find their loved ones. We send our thoughts to the Cleveland women and Tiffany Tehan. We wish them well on their journey.

There a term that's often mentioned by Black journalists, myself and others. It's called Missing White Woman Syndrome. It's a phrase that was started after the junk food media stayed focused on Holloway while a pregnant woman by the name of LaToyia Figueroa got little to no coverage. Her disappearance was overshadowed. The media covered Natalee Holloway about the time Figueroa went missing.

Although I've not been on Wikipedia lately, I can claim credit in creating this page and Missing White Woman Syndrome. In 2005, I was really upset over Loserville ambulance chasers Greta and the Mustached Guy ongoing obsession with this story. They've made this a story more of a movie than an actual missing person case.

I was annoyed with Nancy Grace (Nancy Shrew) and Rita Cosby (Raspy Cosby) always rushing to judgment in this Aruba situation.

LaToyia Figueroa went misisng in 2005. She ended up being killed by her former boyfriend.

The article about LaToyia Figueroa took a life of it's own.

She went missing and was found dead. Her former boyfriend Stephen Poaches was arrested and put in the iron college. Police discovered Figueroa's remains in a grassy, partially wooded lot in Chester, Pennsylvania, located 13 miles south of Philadelphia. They arrested Stephen Poaches, the father of her unborn child, on August 20, more than a month after she was reported missing.

On October 17, 2006, Poaches was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Figueroa and her unborn child.

The disappearance of Figueroa sparked controversy about media coverage because cable news channels, such as CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News Channel, neglected to cover her story in favor of Natalee Holloway, a Caucasian teen missing on the island of Aruba.

Some observers protested that Figueroa's case was similar to the Laci Peterson case (which also covered the same timespan) and thus deserved greater attention, implying that race was a factor in the lack of coverage.

Missing White Woman Syndrome is a phrase coined by social scientists and media commentators to describe the "wall-to-wall coverage" given in media reporting, especially television, to missing person cases involving young, white, upper-middle class women or girls.

Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight in 2013.

The degree of coverage is usually compared with cases concerning a missing male, or missing females of other ethnicity, socioeconomic classes or perceived physical attractiveness.

The actual phrase comes from Sheri Parks, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, who used the term in a 2006 interview with CNN to describe this observed media trend.

On the ABC's Nightline, there's a story about Black & Missing, an organization devoted to finding missing people of color. They work everyday trying to find missing people. They work harder than the junk food media.

It has to be more like an unarmed teenager being shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer to make the junk food media coverage.

Still with the celebration of the three missing Cleveland women and the agony of defeat in the George Zimmerman trial, we must keep an open mind to what happens in America.

The junk food media will always rile us into political action. This Trayvon Martin and Cleveland Three will spark a decision about race.

Hopeful that things will turn out for the better for all the missing people in the world. It's a shame that the media overlooks those people because of a ratings grabbing event.

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