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Missing white woman syndrome (MWWS) is a phrase coined by media and social critics 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. The degree of coverage is usually compared with cases concerning a missing male, or missing females of other ethnicities, socioeconomic classes or 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 theorised media trend.

Media coverage

United States

Professor Provost, president of the National Center for Missing Adults, opines that the media tends to focus on "damsels in distress" – typically, affluent young white women and teenagers.

While the disappearances of Laci Peterson and Natalee Holloway became sensational news stories, a pregnant black/Hispanic woman named LaToyia Figueroa disappeared from Philadelphia three years later and attracted less national attention, despite efforts by her family to enlist the media to help find her (Figueroa was later found murdered). One observer also saw contrasts between the attention received by Peterson and Evelyn Hernandez who was nine months pregnant when she disappeared in 2002.

United Kingdom

Two cases of missing white girl syndrome are given as contrasting examples: the murder of Hannah Williams and the murder of Danielle Jones. 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.

Yvonne Jewkes cites the murder of Amanda 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. She writes that, in contrast, the street murder of Damilola Taylor initially received little news coverage, with reports initially concentrating upon street crime levels and community policing, 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".

Canada

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

Cited instances

The following missing person cases have been cited as examples of missing white woman syndrome:

• Polly Klaas (October 1, 1993)—found murdered; murderer convicted.
• Chandra Levy (May 1, 2001)—missing for several months; skeletal remains found; murderer convicted.
• Dru Sjodin (November 22, 2003)—found murdered; murderer convicted; prompted Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Registry.
• Brooke Wilberger (May 24, 2004)—abducted, murderer revealed location of body and convicted.
• Natalee Holloway (May 30, 2005) - High school senior who disappeared in Aruba and remains missing. Declared legally dead on January 12, 2012.
• Taylor Behl (September 5, 2005)—17-year-old Virginia Commonwealth University freshman disappeared and was later found dead; murderer convicted.
• Michelle Gardner-Quinn (October 7, 2006)—21-year-old undergraduate at the University of Vermont who disappeared and was later found dead, murderer convicted.

In the Iraq War

Critics have also 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 would more readily identify.

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.

See also

• Media bias

References

1. ^ Foreman, Tom (March 14, 2006). "Diagnosing 'Missing White Woman Syndrome'". CNN.com. Retrieved July 7, 2011. There is no polite way to say it, and it is a fact of television news. Media and social critics call the wall-to-wall coverage that seems to swirl around these events, "Missing White Woman Syndrome." That was the phrase invoked by Sheri Parks, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, during our interview yesterday.
2. Robinson, Eugene (June 10, 2005). "(White) Women We Love". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 7, 2011. Whatever our ultimate reason for singling out these few unfortunate victims, among the thousands of Americans who are murdered or who vanish each year, 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.
3. ^ "Race Bias in Media Coverage of Missing Women?; Cheryl Hines Dishes on New Show". CNN.com. March 17, 2006. Retrieved January 8, 2013. TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Natalee Holloway, Lori Hacking, Taylor Biehl, the list goes on and on. When pretty white females are killed or disappear, media storms follow. So much so that critics have coined a phrase for it. PARKS: Like everybody else, I call it the missing white woman syndrome.
4. Krajicek, David. "Damsels in Distress". TruTV.com. p. 3. Retrieved July 7, 2011.
5. St. John, Kelly (April 21, 2003). "Eerily similar case languishes in obscurity; Torso of missing pregnant mom was found in S.F. Bay last year". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved November 24, 2010.
6. Fiona Brookman (2005). Understanding Homicide. London: Sage Publications. p. 257. ISBN 0-7619-4755-8.
7. ^ Yvonne Jewkes (2004). Media and Crime. London: Sage Publications. pp. 52–53. ISBN 0-7619-4765-5.
8. Gilchrist, Kristen (May 27, 2008). "Invisible Victims: Disparity in Print-News Media Coverage of Missing/Murdered Aboriginal and White Women". AllAcademic.com. Retrieved June 8, 2011.
9. ^ Johnson, Alex (July 23, 2004). "Damsels in distress: If you're missing, it helps to be young, white and female". MSNBC.com. Retrieved July 7, 2011.
10. "House panel passes 'Dru's Law' in sex offender bill". USA Today. July 27, 2005. Retrieved January 8, 2013.
11. Floyd, Jami (July 10, 2008). "Remembering Michelle". CNN.com. Retrieved January 8, 2012.
12. Douglas, Williams (November 9, 2003). "A case of race? One POW acclaimed, another ignored". Seattle Times. Archived from the original on December 6, 2004. Retrieved January 8, 2013.
13. Davidson, Osha Gray (May 27, 2004). "The Forgotten Soldier". Rolling Stone Magazine. Archived from the original on February 24, 2009. Retrieved July 31, 2007.
14. "Testimony of Jessica Lynch" (PDF). House.gov. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 20, 2009. Retrieved February 2, 2009.

Further reading

• Wanzo, Rebecca (2008). "The Era of Lost (White) Girls: On Body and Event". Differences. 19 (2): 99–126. doi:10.1215/10407391-2008-005.

External links

• Missing Woman Ignored Because She's Black? article about the lack of coverage around Athena Curry's disappearance, missing since May 2011.
• Met chief accuses media of racism – Head of London's police says murders in minority communities appear "not to interest the mainstream media"
• Press should not feel too smug after Blair's blunder – Journalist comments on Police Commissioner's remarks
• New Statesman – Prof. of Journalism on male/female contrast
• Missing White Woman Syndrome
• Black and Missing

• Media bias
• Race and society
• Sexism
• Social phenomena
• Women and death
• Youth
• Missing people