To ask why the media seems so fixated on missing white women?

[TheGreyShark]

It feels like every time a woman goes missing, the amount of media coverage she gets depends heavily on her race. When a young, attractive white woman disappears, it’s headline news, with rolling updates, public concern and extensive investigations. Meanwhile, countless missing women of colour - many from vulnerable backgrounds - barely get a mention.

Of course, every missing person case is tragic but the disparity in coverage is glaring. Is it just about what gets views or is there a deeper bias at play?

AIBU to think the media has an obvious preference when it comes to whose stories get told?

Stop looking for racism where there is none. I’m so sick of this.

You really think racism isn’t a part of media coverage of missing people?
Wow.

YANBU. It even has a name "Missing White Woman Syndrome"

Missing white women, especially pretty ones, will pretty much always get more attention. I say this as a white woman.

You’re right OP Young white middle class women get tons more coverage than any other group when they go missing.

Missing white women syndrome. Women of colour are seen similarly to men in this regard, not as important/vulnerable/attractive enough to generate concern and sympathy.

I think a lot depends on the circumstances and how it is perceived on social media. If it's discussed on Twitter and other sites then the news outlets will pay it more attention as they know more people will want to read about it.

With the papers it will also be because clicks equal cash so the more clicks something gets the more money they make the more they will post similar.

Why do you think it is then? If not racism?

Can you give some examples of women of colour in this country whose disappearances you do not feel garnered enough attention relative to the cases of white women?

I agree. I have seen police appeals for of missing young black people on my X recently but they haven’t made the mainstream media.

I think being middle class and having media savvy contacts helps. If a young white traveller woman had been abducted instead of Sarah Everard I don’t think we would have heard much about it.

Oops! How embarrassing for you 😳

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

Can you give examples of women of colour whose disapperance has made the headlines on a par with eg Nicola Bulley?

The Gabby Petito case springs to mind.

They can’t report on everyone 🤷‍♀️ We’re a predominantly white country anyway. OK, the actual number of missing black women might be smaller but we don’t have nearly as many black women in this country.

• according to the 2021 Census, the total population of England and Wales was 59.6 million, and 81.7% of the population was white
• people from Asian ethnic groups made up the second largest percentage of the population (9.3%), followed by black (4.0%), mixed (2.9%) and other (2.1%) ethnic groups

Only 18.3% of the population are actually of colour anyway. That’s not to say that they shouldn’t be reported on. What I’m trying to say is that there’s 4 x more white people to report on. Maybe not as many black people are going missing as white people.

Edited to include all of colour as misread OP.

https://www.standard.co.uk/comment/london-missing-women-black-samaria-ayanle-feminism-b1146872.html

Part of the issue is that many of these cases don’t get enough visibility precisely because they weren’t covered in the first place. That said, the cases of Blessing Olusegun and Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry come to mind - where the response from both the media and institutions seemed comparatively muted. I’m not saying every case deserves the same attention regardless of circumstances but the pattern over time does seem to reflect a clear disparity in whose lives are treated as ‘newsworthy.’

Black people are four times as likely to go missing:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/black-people-missing-b1827530.html

I think this is so common as to be a common comedy trope.

I am sure people have done lots of research into this - the same is true for missing children and who is viewed with greater sympathy.

Part of me wonders if the simple explanation is most people in society are white and most of the media is white so they feel greater empathy towards people that ressemble them? I am sure there is more complex commentary on womanhood, femininity and what is seen as more dainty and deserving of concern.

But then the same trend is observed in the USA which is far more diverse than the UK so I don’t know.

Nicola Bulley’s case made the headlines primarily because of the apparent mystery - how could a woman walking her dog while on a Teams call in a popular beauty spot just vanish without a trace (of course, as we now know, there were failures in the search and she was there the whole time). It was a fairly unique set of circumstances and unfortunately drew all the sleuthers/true crime idiots in.

I’m not aware of any case of a woman of colour’s disappearance in comparable “mysterious” circumstances.

The media also has an obvious preference who presents the stories

The media focuses on cases where the disappearance is most unexplainable, which generates more clicks and more ad revenue for them. It's mostly a business decision and a class rather than race issue.

As you mentioned yourself, WOC are disproportionately from vulnerable backgrounds which means a lot of disappearances are tragic but more easily explained. There's also a statistic showing that the majority of "missing" people run away voluntarily. So the media doesn't have anything to gain by highlighting cases where someone could have been in an abusive relationship and had motives to run away or suffered from severe MH issues or was personally involved with individuals from the drug & crime scene. Many missing white women from these sort of backgrounds do NOT get media attention either, for the same reasons.

It brings the case of Hannah Kobayashi to mind. She was not white either but middle class and the disappearance was out of character. She disappeared between two connecting flights and that's the sort of thing the media loves. Her dad ended up killing himself out of despair, only for her to turn up months later and it turns out she ran away voluntarily after all.

No need to be embarrassed on my behalf.

You're not aware precisely because they aren't reported on! You're confirming the OP's point.

In reality the media report when it’s an unusual situation especially (alas) if it’s likely to be a bad outcome. So nice middle class mother goes missing is always going to be more newsworthy than out of control drug abusing teen goes missing for the 4th time. I’m not saying it right but it’s what gets you to read the column inches.

plenty of stories are about men or women of colour but they will be from “nice” homes too

Ooh yes there is.