Why do some missing people make headlines and others don’t?

[usernamechanged1]

I read an article in The Independent about women who have gone missing and (to my knowledge) have had very little media attention.

Independent article

With the ongoing case of Nicola Bulley in mind, why do you think that some people are headline news and others barely make a ripple?

Happy Valley Season 3 ended recently and this new case could be Season 4 in so many ways. It's in the north of England among beautiful surroundings involving an attractive, middle class couple to whom some/many(?) can relate. I don't mean to take away from this case, or reduce it to a TV drama. Rather, the details of the case are very compelling. What sets it apart is that the dog was found where it was with no harness, next to the river and, most peculiar of all, NB's phone was left on a bench still connected to a call. What's happened is truly the kind of thing that would happen on TV. I think this is why so many people are following it. We want to solve the case and we want her found. Of course, it really has nothing to do with us all and we can only watch, read and see how it all unfolds.

I don't understand why the wee 11 year old girl missing in Glasgow didn't make the news until she was found with the trans butcher.

Surely a missing 11 year old is huge news, unless there is a father involved.

Most people who work in the news media are white and middle class. It’s just human nature that when a missing person is someone they can personally identify with, (eg Nicola Bulley, Sarah Everard, Madeleine McCann) that case will get far more prominent coverage than, for example, an older homeless black or Asian man with a criminal record.
Also, cynical as it may sound, they believe their audience will care more & engage more if the missing person is female & attractive. Are they wrong about that?

Isn't this a key part of plot in Get Out?

I'm working on a theory that conspiracy theories, the big ones, have an element of frustration to them. That anger & frustration are what feeds the conspiracy making machinery. We're all frustrated not understanding what happened to NB, so... recipe for crazy theories and much shared angst.

Old scruffy substance abuser men go missing a lot. Don't exactly hit the news. They aren't perceived as attractive relatable victims.

Race, class, sex and age.

But also individual circumstances. Some people go missing regularly and turn up again regularly. Some people go missing once but it's clear that they wanted to disappear or it's not clear but it's likely. Some people lead such chaotic lives that it's never clear whether they are missing or not. Some people are so alone that nobody misses them.

It's a lot more unusual (I'd have thought) for a mum with young children to go missing, than for a young, single male. Or at least it's more mystifying and/or the reasons for it more likely to be dramatic.

I don't think it is as simple as lots are making out. My friend went missing a few years ago. We all knew what had happened to her, she had ended her life. 9/10 times in the city where I live you know what's happened and they find the body a while later in the sea or the river a few days/weeks later if you the family are lucky. It's terribly sad and I hope I don't make it sound like it isn't but it is a fact of life here. NIght time river patrols to try and help people have been introduced but it still happens sometimes.

At the end of the day people often don't the back story, in my friends case people who didn't know her were speculating that maybe she had run away, just wanted to disappear and start a new life but people close to her and the police knew what was really going on even though her backstory was never publicised until her inquest.

I just saw my post is riddled with mistakes, I'm not illiterate I swear, just tired.

A lady local to me went missing just a few weeks ago. It never seemed to make it past the local Facebook page and I feel it must be awful for them seeing the huge amount of press this recent case has generated.
Sadly this lady had taken her own life but she was not found immediately and she left a young family behind. It wasn't even picked up on local news.

Think partly due to them saying police messed up ! As she had been missing for a few days before making headlines. Friend has also been pushing it though she also created go fund me account which got closed down. There was a lady who went missing next county to us only seemed to make local news and fb. Her body was found a few months later had gone jogging but never made it home.

Never heard anything at all

@Weedoormatnomore You'd think that would be a massive murder hunt 😳

Old scruffy substance abuser men go missing a lot. Don't exactly hit the news. They aren't perceived as attractive relatable victims.

A young man local to me who meets this description went missing just over a year ago. Circumstances were almost identical to Nicola Bulley.

Walking with his dog by a river, he disappeared but dog was found (by another dog walker) along with the lead.

It made the local news but that was pretty much it!

They found his body almost 6 weeks later in the area where the river flows into the sea.

The whole incident has illustrated how we make judgments about people on very superficial appearances E.g. their clothes, hairstyle, race, age. A schoolteacher was stabbed and killed in our village by a teenage pupil who knocked on his door. It had a paragraph in the local paper, it wasn’t even on the local TV news. When something similar happened in London it was on the news for weeks.

Yep, race, class and attractiveness.

People seem to be massively underestimating the detail about her phone being found in the middle of a Zoom meeting - it was such an unusual detail and immediately added an element of “true crime” to it. I think as others have said the dog walking as well - I know nothing about dogs but other women (of a mixture of races) I know have said this is what really resonated with them because they often go out walking their dogs alone early in the morning.

And yes, an attractive, middle class blonde woman will usually get more media attention. Although as PP said the media savviness of friends and family plays a huge part in that.

I don’t think it is race or class it’s more about the level of potential crime ! Shannon Matthews was definitely not from a middle class family and she was quite rightly given massive press attention with a good outcome.

Are we just being manipulated? M.McCann's parents have implied that they wish they hadn't let their friends call in the news media. That's why MM got famous, there was a deliberate strategy of involving journalists, promoting the story.

Middle of Soham trial period, when media talked of little else, there was another trial about a horrible murder of a similar age teenager in East Midlands. Got no national coverage at all. That victim was white IIRC, but hadn't been subject to a large manhunt.

Yep.

Nicola’s family and friends are very active in the media and social media, that created a lot of interest in her case.
the circumstances are so strange too, it was daylight , an area she frequently goes to , other people were around , dog was dry and agitated

So was Ethan Patz case He went missing in day light in a busy street in New York , a short distance between the school bus And where he lived , his disappearance is probably the most well known child disappearance due to the photo on milk carton campaigns and forming

the National disappearance day on the day he went missing,

The police will have dozens and dozens of missing persons cases at any one time. They will be risk assessed based on information provided at the time of reporting. So a 15 year old kid in a care home who doesn’t return by curfew every Friday versus a 78 year old man with dementia who has wandered off. You’ve only got limited resources to direct to those cases and you will direct them basically where the greatest risk of harm is. I’ve been to report teenagers missing who’ve been gone missing for days before the parents do anything. In one case the only photo they had of their child was a school photo from about 6 years earlier. So not everyone has the concerned family to start with.

It’s also not just the police or the media…. It’s about us and what stories we are drawn to. What papers do we buy and what stories do we click on online. We are the driving force because if it increased circulation figures the press / media would publish it.

God that’s depressing.

Fully aware of class/age/sex/looks in UK news reporting, but seeing those missing people with no coverage at the end makes me feel so angry.

Was Nicola Bulley middle class? As a mortgage adviser with an Essex accent I don’t think so.

News appetite for types of story is also a thing.

Small children will always get attention, but natural disasters sort of have to take turns, as do wars. Hence Turkey pinched the natural disaster slot before NZ could get a look in.

The mainstream media simply don't report story after story of the same type of content in a news bulletin. One war, one social, one lighthearted piece of news... Etc.

Do you seriously think there are no middle class people from Essex? Really?