Forget Media Attention If You're Poor, Black, Ugly

[Hampton]

A year ago, May 7, Stacy-Ann Sappleton took a taxi to Queens, N.Y., from LaGuardia, bound for the home of her future in-laws. She had flown in from Detroit to complete a few tasks for her planned September wedding.

She never made it. Her fiance, Damion Blair, his parents and Sappleton's mother spent a frantic weekend searching before they learned of her tragic demise.

Never heard of her? Neither has most of America.

Like runaway Georgia bride Jennifer Wilbanks, Sappleton was missing for three days. Like Wilbanks, Sappleton was young (26), middle-class and planning a wedding.

Unlike Wilbanks, Sappleton's disappearance didn't receive 24-hour cable news coverage, complete with breathless speculation by celebrity pundits, or banner newspaper headlines. Unlike Wilbanks, Sappleton was black.

The frenzy surrounding Wilbanks' disappearance once again highlights a peculiar feature of early 21st-century American culture: a fixation on pretty, young, middle-class white women. While tens of thousands of American adults disappear every year -- some eventually turn up, safe and sound; some are never heard from again; some are recovered as corpses -- only a small sliver get the Wilbanks/
Laci Peterson/Lori Hacking treatment.

After Sappleton's battered, bullet-riddled body was found in a Dumpster in Queens, about five miles from the home of her future in-laws, her fiance angrily refused to talk to reporters. "When she first disappeared, we tried to contact the media, and they wouldn't help us," Blair told The New York Times.

Full Story. (http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/ucas/20050508/cm_ucas/forgetmediaattentionifyourepoorblackuglyorold)

[guerillablack]

Don't forget who apparently kidnapped her and raped her. A hispanic man. More media attention.

[Sabocat]

It's the same tired old story with the media.


Everyone has heard of the Kent State incident....that was a predominantly white school

What media coverage, or public attention did Jackson State University receive? Same vicious attack by cops, but no one was interested because it was a predominantly black school.

Apparently, it's only a crime when it happens to white people.

[cormacobear]

Research proves that society has been let down by capitalist media.

Pressure from media owners leads to underreporting of social issues, study says

January 24, 2000 | National Office | Topic(s): Corporations & corporate power, Media / Media analysis | Publication Type: News Release

Ottawa; January 24, 2000--The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives today released a report, The Missing News, which documents and analyzes recurring blind spots in news coverage by Canada's print media. "These blind spots are related to institutional filters and corporate pressures on journalists' working conditions," said Dr. Robert Hackett one of the study's authors and a professor of communication at Simon Fraser University.

The Missing News reports the findings of an independent six-year research project, Newswatch Canada, funded primarily by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Employing content analysis, the researchers have identified categories of political stories that have been systematically underreported. Hackett gave the following examples:

·stories of government tax breaks for the wealthy--how they shift the tax burden to middle and lower income earners and reduce the capacity to pay for social programs;
·stories which expose the vested interests and biases of media owners themselves, one case study showing that changes in ownership clearly influence newspapers' coverage of their new parent company;
·stories of corporate activities which have adverse social impacts; for example, the growing corporate intrusion into public health care or corporate complicity in cigarette smuggling concurrent with their campaign for lower taxes.

Journalists interviewed for the project also identified newsroom cutbacks and increasingly bottom-line-driven priorities of management as important factors filtering the news.

The study also found a large imbalance in the use of sources with business and conservative policy institutes favoured 3:1 over their progressive counterparts.
The study makes several policy recommendations to improve the quality, diversity and independence of print journalism, including: ceilings on media ownership holdings, a right of reply, and independent press councils with teeth.
Professor Hackett urged groups of concerned citizens to form alliances to advocate for media reform.

"Furthermore," said Hackett, "journalists' unions should--as the Calgary Herald strike demonstrates--place a high priority on establishing protections against ownership interference with editorial content."

[Hampton]

What media coverage, or public attention did Jackson State University receive?

That and it happened in Mississippi. You know how they get down. It's a sport down there.

Good bok on the subject:

http://upress.kent.edu/books/images/covers/s/Spofford-hr.jpg

[Colombia]

Good post. I never understand why the media plays so much attention to cases such as these when they happen all the time in the USA.

[cormacobear]

Look at it from their point of veiw, if you isolate a story you give the impression that it is a rarety without ever saying it, Rathan than statistics which would better relate the situation but might inspire popular opinion to demand changes upsetting the status quo. Thus maintaining a false confidence in the administration. (the admin being rich white guys)

That study was done in Canada most experts feel ownerships innfluence over editorial content and the related underreporting of social issuesis even more substantial in the U.S.