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Friday, July 20, 2007
Media Coverage Of High-Profile Disappearances Faces Scrutiny
Media Coverage Of High-Profile Disappearances Faces Scrutiny
By The Plain Dealer. 02 Jul 2007-->
When Jaquis Cox vanished, Nancy Grace paid no attention. When Gloria Walker went missing, Greta Van Susteren never came.
But when Jessie Davis disappeared, the cable news divas leaped on the story.
It fit a narrative consistently covered in the national media - the suspicious disappearance of a young, attractive, white woman. Local TV stations and newspapers, too, devoted loads of space to the story.
She was nine months pregnant. She struggled in her home. Her 2-year-old son, left alone for more than a day, uttered haunting statements like, “Mommy’s in rug.” Her boyfriend, a married police officer, was a suspect who was eventually charged in her death.
For days, the saga twisted, with an unrelated newborn found on a Wooster doorstep and a marijuana garden unearthed by a search party.
“It’s so predictable, it’s embarrassing,” said Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a media studies organization. “With 24-hour cable news networks, followed up by the Internet product that updates every seven minutes to every hour, there is an appetite for the unfolding story, with incremental updates.”
With such stories, cable news ratings “go through the roof,” said WEWS Channel 5 News Director Steve Hyvonen, who worked for four years at MSNBC.
That’s big, since the three main cable news networks lost 8 percent of primetime viewers last year, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
“Crimes that are solved immediately don’t tend to make national news,” McBride said. “It tends to be the mystery. It plays on the fear.”
But it also depends on the victim. Some go missing, and no one notices Jaquis Cox, a black 13-year-old, went missing June 20 in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood.
No media seemed to notice.
Three days later, Cleveland City Council sent a news release, prompting local television last Sunday to cover the disappearance, said Councilwoman Sabra Pierce Scott, who helped with the search.
“They’re more concerned about white women and children than they are about black,” Scott said.
Jaquis came home that night. He said he was kidnapped, locked in a basement and assaulted, said police Lt. Thomas Stacho. Police are investigating.
Gloria Walker, a 46-year-old black grandmother, was last seen May 20, when she left her Cleveland home in a 1996 Lumina.
Her family, whose pleas never made national news, has been searching ever since.
Walker is one of nearly 51,000 missing American adults, according to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. Almost none garnered the household-name status of Laci Peterson, Natalee Holloway and Chandra Levy.
“We’re all glad that Jessie got that kind of attention,” said Judy Martin, founder of Survivors/Victims of Tragedy, a Euclid organization that helps families who have lost loved ones through violent deaths. “But so should the next person - blue, green, purple, I don’t care.”
Thousands, if not millions, followed the search when Davis disappeared from her home June 14. The Stark County Sheriff’s Office resembled an RV camp, with satellite TV trucks, awnings and folding lawn chairs.
It’s not as simple as black and white.
Missing black women, such as Stepha Henry in South Florida and LaToyia Figueroa in Philadelphia, have been featured on cable news. But when Jennifer Kathleen Nielsen, a pregnant white woman, was found dead behind a North Carolina gas station on June 14 (the day before Davis was reported missing), cable news barely mentioned it.
In general, though, white women better fit the “damsel in distress” profiles that media believe sells, the Poynter Institute’s McBride said. She thinks it’s indefensible.
Most of the people running news organizations are white, she said. People are inherently prejudiced, presuming that if victims are not white, they are somehow involved in their own disappearance, perhaps by making themselves vulnerable. And news organizations assume the audience is white and middle class.
“We ignore huge numbers . . . of murders committed against marginalized people - prostitutes, drug addicts, minorities, gays,” said Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University. “When it happens to a white, attractive, middle-class woman who lives in the suburbs, it is very frightening because it’s taken personally.”
That threat, that negative fascination, Levin said, is key to understanding the intense coverage.
On a local level, it’s different, McBride said. Local news executives defend their coverage.
The Plain Dealer and Cleveland TV stations said they concentrated on the story simply because it was newsworthy.
The newspaper prominently covered the Davis story on its front page June 19, a day after hundreds of people had scoured Stark County for her.
Clearly, Davis had not run away, said Plain Dealer Managing Editor Tom O’Hara. Bleach was poured on the carpet, Davis’ comforter was missing, and her 2-year-old was wandering the house alone.
“It would be stupid not to cover this aggressively,” O’Hara said, adding that cable news’ interest made that even more apparent.
Myriad viewers identified with the story, said Rita Andolsen, acting news director at WKYC Channel 3.
The station began coverage June 15, the day Davis’ mother reported her missing, after receiving a request for help, Andolsen said. With thousands searching for Davis, it became a story of community support.
“If this were a book, a mystery novel, you probably wouldn’t believe it,” said Hyvonen, the news director at Channel 5.
The story, he said, would have been just as intriguing if Davis were Hispanic or black.
Reports of other missing people, such as Cox and Walker, depend on whether police treat the disappearance as a crime, Hyvonen said.
The Plain Dealer, too, takes its direction from how police treat missing people. Reporters must be cautious and gather enough information to know a crime has occurred.
“A lot of missing persons, as we know, ran away,” O’Hara said. “There could be a lot of non-newsworthy reasons that people are missing.”
But that’s where Survivors/Victims of Tragedy wants change. Martin envisions photos of missing people shown on local television two or three times a day so people could spot them.
“Having the picture shown is definitely hope,” she said. “A family should not have to fight so hard.”
– By Laura Johnston
By The Plain Dealer. 02 Jul 2007-->
When Jaquis Cox vanished, Nancy Grace paid no attention. When Gloria Walker went missing, Greta Van Susteren never came.
But when Jessie Davis disappeared, the cable news divas leaped on the story.
It fit a narrative consistently covered in the national media - the suspicious disappearance of a young, attractive, white woman. Local TV stations and newspapers, too, devoted loads of space to the story.
She was nine months pregnant. She struggled in her home. Her 2-year-old son, left alone for more than a day, uttered haunting statements like, “Mommy’s in rug.” Her boyfriend, a married police officer, was a suspect who was eventually charged in her death.
For days, the saga twisted, with an unrelated newborn found on a Wooster doorstep and a marijuana garden unearthed by a search party.
“It’s so predictable, it’s embarrassing,” said Kelly McBride, an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, a media studies organization. “With 24-hour cable news networks, followed up by the Internet product that updates every seven minutes to every hour, there is an appetite for the unfolding story, with incremental updates.”
With such stories, cable news ratings “go through the roof,” said WEWS Channel 5 News Director Steve Hyvonen, who worked for four years at MSNBC.
That’s big, since the three main cable news networks lost 8 percent of primetime viewers last year, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
“Crimes that are solved immediately don’t tend to make national news,” McBride said. “It tends to be the mystery. It plays on the fear.”
But it also depends on the victim. Some go missing, and no one notices Jaquis Cox, a black 13-year-old, went missing June 20 in Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood.
No media seemed to notice.
Three days later, Cleveland City Council sent a news release, prompting local television last Sunday to cover the disappearance, said Councilwoman Sabra Pierce Scott, who helped with the search.
“They’re more concerned about white women and children than they are about black,” Scott said.
Jaquis came home that night. He said he was kidnapped, locked in a basement and assaulted, said police Lt. Thomas Stacho. Police are investigating.
Gloria Walker, a 46-year-old black grandmother, was last seen May 20, when she left her Cleveland home in a 1996 Lumina.
Her family, whose pleas never made national news, has been searching ever since.
Walker is one of nearly 51,000 missing American adults, according to the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. Almost none garnered the household-name status of Laci Peterson, Natalee Holloway and Chandra Levy.
“We’re all glad that Jessie got that kind of attention,” said Judy Martin, founder of Survivors/Victims of Tragedy, a Euclid organization that helps families who have lost loved ones through violent deaths. “But so should the next person - blue, green, purple, I don’t care.”
Thousands, if not millions, followed the search when Davis disappeared from her home June 14. The Stark County Sheriff’s Office resembled an RV camp, with satellite TV trucks, awnings and folding lawn chairs.
It’s not as simple as black and white.
Missing black women, such as Stepha Henry in South Florida and LaToyia Figueroa in Philadelphia, have been featured on cable news. But when Jennifer Kathleen Nielsen, a pregnant white woman, was found dead behind a North Carolina gas station on June 14 (the day before Davis was reported missing), cable news barely mentioned it.
In general, though, white women better fit the “damsel in distress” profiles that media believe sells, the Poynter Institute’s McBride said. She thinks it’s indefensible.
Most of the people running news organizations are white, she said. People are inherently prejudiced, presuming that if victims are not white, they are somehow involved in their own disappearance, perhaps by making themselves vulnerable. And news organizations assume the audience is white and middle class.
“We ignore huge numbers . . . of murders committed against marginalized people - prostitutes, drug addicts, minorities, gays,” said Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University. “When it happens to a white, attractive, middle-class woman who lives in the suburbs, it is very frightening because it’s taken personally.”
That threat, that negative fascination, Levin said, is key to understanding the intense coverage.
On a local level, it’s different, McBride said. Local news executives defend their coverage.
The Plain Dealer and Cleveland TV stations said they concentrated on the story simply because it was newsworthy.
The newspaper prominently covered the Davis story on its front page June 19, a day after hundreds of people had scoured Stark County for her.
Clearly, Davis had not run away, said Plain Dealer Managing Editor Tom O’Hara. Bleach was poured on the carpet, Davis’ comforter was missing, and her 2-year-old was wandering the house alone.
“It would be stupid not to cover this aggressively,” O’Hara said, adding that cable news’ interest made that even more apparent.
Myriad viewers identified with the story, said Rita Andolsen, acting news director at WKYC Channel 3.
The station began coverage June 15, the day Davis’ mother reported her missing, after receiving a request for help, Andolsen said. With thousands searching for Davis, it became a story of community support.
“If this were a book, a mystery novel, you probably wouldn’t believe it,” said Hyvonen, the news director at Channel 5.
The story, he said, would have been just as intriguing if Davis were Hispanic or black.
Reports of other missing people, such as Cox and Walker, depend on whether police treat the disappearance as a crime, Hyvonen said.
The Plain Dealer, too, takes its direction from how police treat missing people. Reporters must be cautious and gather enough information to know a crime has occurred.
“A lot of missing persons, as we know, ran away,” O’Hara said. “There could be a lot of non-newsworthy reasons that people are missing.”
But that’s where Survivors/Victims of Tragedy wants change. Martin envisions photos of missing people shown on local television two or three times a day so people could spot them.
“Having the picture shown is definitely hope,” she said. “A family should not have to fight so hard.”
– By Laura Johnston
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
The Informed Reader - WSJ.com : How Racism Hurts the Body
The Informed Reader - WSJ.com : How Racism Hurts the Body: "Research into the physical effects of racism on its victims could help explain a disparity in health across races and reframe racism as a health issue. Health experts have long blamed racial disparities on social forces, linking higher rates of disease and death among African-Americans to joblessness, unsafe housing, and other inequities. This round of research, which scientists stress is preliminary, seeks to establish if racism itself plays a role in the disparity. In more than 100 studies on the subject, most of them published since 2000, some patterns have been established, reports Madeline Drexler for the Boston Globe."
A Memorial for Latoyia Figueroa on July 21, 2007
This letter is from Melvin Figueroa, father of the late Latoyia Figueroa:
There will be a Prayer Service for my daughter at Saint Malachy Church 1429 North 11th st Philadelphia, PA, on July 21st 2007.
May Latoyia and Nyla rest in peace.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Sketchy Thoughts: MOVE 9 Prisoner Janet Africa Harrassed
Sketchy Thoughts: MOVE 9 Prisoner Janet Africa Harrassed: "It seems Janet Africa - one of the MOVE political prisoners - is being harassed by guards at SCI Cambridge Springs. The following alert from Ramona Africa:ONA MOVE! This is an alert to all of our supporters that the guards at SCI-Cambridge Springs, where our sisters are housed, are starting trouble.
Our sister, Janet Africa, was stopped by a male guard who said he wanted to pat search her. Janet informed him that it's against our belief to have a man feeling on her body and that she wanted the option of having a female guard search her as provided by prison policy.
She was taken to a female prison guard named Dover who became beligerant and told janet that she wasn't special and wasn't getting any special treatment. Dover then told the male guard to take Janet back where he got her from and go ahead and search her. Janet start putting some information on the guards when another guard came to see what all the commotion was about.
Dover then tells him that he should give Janet a misconduct and put her in the hole.. This was obviously a set-up from the beginning because all of those prison officials know who MOVE people are and know our policy about male guards searching our women."
Fast-tracking of Cape York welfare reforms 'politically driven' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Fast-tracking of Cape York welfare reforms 'politically driven' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation): "A former community worker at the Aurukun Aboriginal community on Queensland's Cape York says the fast-tracking of welfare reforms in Aboriginal communities is being politically driven.
Philip Martin says there are profound problems with implementing the reforms and policy makers are forgetting about the effects of radical change on Indigenous people."
Philip Martin says there are profound problems with implementing the reforms and policy makers are forgetting about the effects of radical change on Indigenous people."
Violence and the Rez « The Blog and the Bullet
Violence and the Rez « The Blog and the Bullet: "Tracy Rector blogs on NativeVue about representations of Native Americans in the media:
During our recent three month Native Lens Workshop at Muckleshoot, we attended a number of teen gatherings, talking groups and family health meetings. We listened to the youth as they voiced their concerns about issues negatively impacting their lives. They expressed concerns not only about the immediate situations happening on the rez but also how distressing it is to always see the news, newspapers, media making violence especially domestic violence look cool or glamorous. Some of the girls felt that the media was directly responsible for so many people staying in bad relationships because all the negative hype makes the abusive situation seem normal!"
During our recent three month Native Lens Workshop at Muckleshoot, we attended a number of teen gatherings, talking groups and family health meetings. We listened to the youth as they voiced their concerns about issues negatively impacting their lives. They expressed concerns not only about the immediate situations happening on the rez but also how distressing it is to always see the news, newspapers, media making violence especially domestic violence look cool or glamorous. Some of the girls felt that the media was directly responsible for so many people staying in bad relationships because all the negative hype makes the abusive situation seem normal!"
CJOnline Blogs - Overstreet: Native-American treaty being disputed
CJOnline Blogs - Overstreet: Native-American treaty being disputed: "Not long ago, an issue was shared with me pertaining to the Cherokee Treaty of 1866, which was designed to make free blacks, former slaves and their descendants citizens of the Cherokee Nation.
The discussion was interesting enough that I wanted to learn more about it. The treaty continues in place, but was recently the source of controversy.
In March 2007, the Cherokee Nation put forth an amendment to its constitution. The amendment called for the removal of freedmen from the rolls of tribal membership, which would result in the loss of voting rights and recognition as a distinct group affiliated with the Cherokee Nation.
The motive appears to be the creation of an all-Indian tribe."
The discussion was interesting enough that I wanted to learn more about it. The treaty continues in place, but was recently the source of controversy.
In March 2007, the Cherokee Nation put forth an amendment to its constitution. The amendment called for the removal of freedmen from the rolls of tribal membership, which would result in the loss of voting rights and recognition as a distinct group affiliated with the Cherokee Nation.
The motive appears to be the creation of an all-Indian tribe."
Kirkuk carnage fuels calls for US exit | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited
Kirkuk carnage fuels calls for US exit | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited: "More than 80 people were killed and 150 wounded in Kirkuk, northern Iraq, today as the debate intensified in Washington over a US exit plan.That debate was further complicated by a claim by the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, that Iraqi security forces were ready to take over and the US could leave whenever it wanted."
US Senate unanimously passes threatening measure against Iran
US Senate unanimously passes threatening measure against Iran: "A little publicised amendment to the defence spending bill denouncing Iran for the “murder” of US soldiers in Iraq was proposed by Independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman and passed unanimously in the US Senate on Wednesday. Republicans and Democrats all lined up to support the White House’s unsubstantiated accusations that Tehran is funding, training and arming Iraqi militias, “who are contributing to the destabilisation of Iraq and are responsible for the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces”."
allAfrica.com: Botswana: Police Arrest Bushmen, Says Rights Group (Page 1 of 1)
allAfrica.com: Botswana: Police Arrest Bushmen, Says Rights Group (Page 1 of 1): "Zimkhitha Mbunge | Cape Town: Botswana police have arrested 21 Gana and Gwi Bushmen for hunting on their ancestral land, says an activist group which campaigns for the rights of indigenous people.
In a statement issued in London, Survival International said the men were arrested in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve during June and early July, and they had been scheduled to appear in court last week."
In a statement issued in London, Survival International said the men were arrested in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve during June and early July, and they had been scheduled to appear in court last week."
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Lady Bird Johnson, R.I.P.
Former First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson died Wednesday at age 94 from natural causes. She's known for her beautification programs in the 1960s and beyond as well as a passionate environmentalist. Her legacy lives on. May she rests in peace.
Link:
Thousands See Former First Lady's Casket
Link:
Thousands See Former First Lady's Casket
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