From Newsweek (Oct 21, 2009): How the Media Treat Murder: Why isn’t the story of several missing women in North Carolina getting attention?
It’s an old problem . . . missing or dead white women get breathless, coast-to-coast coverage; missing or dead black or Hispanic women get 12 seconds on local TV. If they’re prostitutes or addicts . . . or merely poor . . . they don’t get even that.
But people are complaining, and maybe the media is beginning to listen. Witness tonight’s coverage, on CNN Headline News, of the serial killings in Cleveland, where most if not all of the victims appear to be poor black women. Nancy Grace, the doyen of missing white women coverage, finding herself temporarily with nothing to say about Chandra Levy, Natalee Holloway, Laci Peterson, or the Runaway Bride, will cover the story on her CNN show tonight (providing another white woman doesn’t go missing between now and then).
That’s progress, I guess. But you know, whether it’s Nancy Grace talking about missing white women or Nancy Grace talking about missing black women, it’s still Nancy Grace, and it’s still cheap tabloid journalism, aimed squarely at the lowest common denominator. CNN, please bring back the news, okay?