I swear I'm not making this up.
I had just finished reading a story about the media going overboard about missing young white women when I turned on the set and saw . . . a cable story about the missing young white woman in Aruba.
It does seem, tragically, that there's a seemingly endless supply of them, and that, equally tragically, television is addicted to them.
I've fulminated on this subject before, but I've got to say, when you look at which missing-persons stories get heavily covered (female, white, usually middle class) and those that don't, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that selective news judgment is at work.
If there's a logical explanation for this, I've yet to hear it. And after JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart, Jennifer Wilbanks, Natalee Holloway, etc., the pattern is unmistakable. In fact, I tried to look for stories about Holloway for the past month and Nexis interrupted my search, saying it would return more than 1,000 documents.
Here's the USA Today piece by Mark Memmott that got me thinking anew about this:
"Tamika Huston's family reported her missing a year ago this week.
"When police in Spartanburg, S.C., began investigating the 24-year-old woman's disappearance, her loved ones swung into action. They distributed fliers, held news conferences and set up a Web site. Huston's story became a cause célèbre in the local media.
"Huston lived alone and obviously hadn't been home for days, if not a week or two. Her dog, Macy, had given birth to puppies.
"Rebkah Howard, Huston's aunt and a public relations professional in Miami, tried to get the national media interested in the case. 'I spent three weeks calling the cable networks, calling newspapers -- even yours,' Howard said this week.
"Not much happened.
"Last August, Fox News Channel's On the Record with Greta Van Susteren briefly noted Huston's disappearance. Fox network's America's Most Wanted did a story about the case in March (it will be repeated this Saturday). National Public Radio did a report last month that, like this story, focused on the lack of interest in Huston's case.
