How About the Media Just Covers Missing Person Cases Instead of Complaining About Which Missing Person Cases Are Covered?
There has been intense national media coverage about Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old woman whose body was found in a national park in Wyoming after she had been missing for several weeks. Her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, is on the run and has refused to cooperate with authorities.
Petito was documenting her road trip with Laundrie and was seen on police footage as the two were pulled over and questioned by police in Utah following an alleged domestic violence incident between the two. After Petito’s body was found this week, her death was ruled as a homicide.
Notice that I didn’t identify Petito’s skin color?
You may think that isn’t novel, and it shouldn’t be. But unfortunately, too many in the media have injected race into their critiques of the extensive press coverage the story has gotten.
“Petito had been mentioned 398 times on Fox News, 346 times on CNN and 100 times on MSNBC,” reported The Washington Post, citing a tally it conducted of a seven-day period that ended Wednesday.
On Monday, MSNBC host Joy Reid didn’t seem to care much about the tragic circumstances surrounding the case, other than to needlessly raise the issue of race. For the first time, I’ll point out that the tragically lost Petito was a White woman.
Reid acknowledged that tragedy perfunctorily, saying “It goes without saying that no family should ever have to endure that kind of pain and the Petito family certainly deserve answers and justice.”
But then, Reid reduced it to a mere case of “Missing White Woman Syndrome,” a term coined by the late journalist and news anchor Gwen Ifill. In a surprising and rare twist later that evening, Fox News host Laura Ingraham expressed agreement with Reid.
It is one thing to question why this tragic case has received so much national attention when there are hundreds of thousands of missing persons cases annually. It is another to analyze purely through a racial lens. Also, missing persons cases generally don’t receive media coverage regardless of race.
How would Reid and others react if people said in response to a non-White person gone missing or a victim of police brutality that the missing or mistreated person is being covered extensively because he or she is Black or some other minority?
Overall, there needs to be a consistent, color-blind standard when it comes to news coverage whether it is, but not limited to, missing persons cases or police shootings. The latter type of case often gets widespread national media coverage if the police officer is White and the victim is Black even though White people are more likely to be killed by police than Black people. Even Ana Navarro of The View, which consists of mostly left-wing women as opposed to being equally diverse ideologically, echoed this sentiment on Thursday as it pertains to press coverage of missing persons cases.
All lives matter. The Nancy Grace-like sensationalism behind cases like Petitio’s, which has occurred thanks to social media and the suspicious behavior of Laundrie, does a disservice to the institution of journalism, the American people, and the victims and their families in police cases.
Additionally, why not use that massive media coverage of Petito’s case as an opportunity to spotlight the issue of domestic violence? One in three women and one in four men “have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner,” according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Thoughts and prayers to Petito’s family and to those missing or dealing with domestic abuse. May we judge people personally not by their background, but rather by their character. And may justice be served in the cases of Petito’s and those like her.
Watch above, via ABC.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
