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Saturday, March 29, 2008
National Media, Missing Persons, Race and Gender
CNN reported yesterday on the renewed search for a 19-year-old Middlebury College student, missing since early February. The student last was seen leaving a dorm building on February 5. Friday's search was the first in more than one month--purportedly because the snowpack had been too deep to allow for a search.
What is striking about this story is that it is the first national media report I have seen on this story; every other news story had been from the Boston papers, the MIddlebury school paper, or other regional sources. This national silence is striking when compared with the way the media ran wild with stories about the tragic murders of students from UNC and Auburn, just within the past two months, not to mention the international news sensation that was the disappearance (and apparent murder) of Natalee Holloway in 2005.
As you might have guessed already, the missing Middlebury student is not an attractive blond white woman. He is Nicholas Garza, a Latino male from Albuquerque. The media long has been criticized for its excessive coverage of female disappearances while ignoring similar stories affecting minority members of the underclass.
So what is going on? Is the assumption that it only is a tragedy when it happens to attractive middle-class young women? Is the assumption that a man (especially a poor or minority man) is more likely to just up and disappear? Or to be in a situation in which he could suffer such harm?
Posted by Howard Wasserman on March 29, 2008 at 01:57 PM | Permalink
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Comments
As I put it in 2005, "a person who followed the MSM uncritically might think that the only missing people in America are young attractive white women."
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2005_05_29-2005_06_04.shtml#1117926239
Posted by: Orin Kerr | Mar 29, 2008 2:10:30 PM
I suspect the media just goes where the market is, amorally.
Posted by: Bruce Boyden | Mar 29, 2008 3:07:57 PM
Re: Bruce Boyden's comment, see generally, Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear.
Posted by: Jason W. | Mar 29, 2008 3:46:05 PM
If you read the cnn article, it says the authorities don't suspect foul play. I have no idea how they came to that conclusion, but that would certainly explain the lack of media coverage.
Not to say there is no media bias towards pretty blonde white girls, but this case doesn't seem to be an example of it.
Posted by: David | Mar 29, 2008 3:58:15 PM
I feel reasonably confident in saying that if Mr. Garza were an attractive white female Middlebury student who disappeared without a trace from her dorm room, without her coat, keys, or purse, and was not heard from, I think two things would be true:
a) It would be a national story that would get at least some coverage and it would not be completely ignored, even as an initially "isn't that strange" disappearance story, for almost two months.
b) The national media would not blandly repeat the assertions that there is no evidence of foul play.
If "news" is defined as "man bites dog" (i.e., anything out of the ordinary), then these events fit, regardless of the gender or race of the victim. Unless the key is foul play--a disappearance is not news, only murder is.
Posted by: Howard Wasserman | Mar 29, 2008 9:26:27 PM
"This ain't aruba, bitch."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-ayers-/on-martin-luther-king-day_b_82549.html
Posted by: Bart Motes | Mar 30, 2008 11:27:22 AM
This is not the only student to go missing under these circumstances. The stories began at Miami of Ohio in 1953. Ron Tammen walked away, was sighted once, and has not been seen for fifty years.
The connection for them is that they are all high achievers and usually heavy computer users.
They are missing because schools do not recognize the requirement for Cubicle Level Protection for student study areas and computer workstations.
Nicholas sat in the library at an open desk or chair for five hours each Sunday. He has to have learned to ignore movement in peripheral vision to do that.
Schools I have contacted for five years are unwilling to investigate this known problem. Cubicles have been used to prevent mental breaks in business offices for forty years.
Parents of missing students likewise do not want to advertise the possibility of a mental break causing the disappearance. They fear that police will stop looking if mental problems are suspected.
Some students have been found when spring thaws local lakes but it is just as likely he is alive and a Dissociative Fugue victim. He might recover in months to return with amnesia of this experience.
Until then efforts should be made to widen the search area. Target homeless shelters and truck stops.
Posted by: L K Tucker | Apr 6, 2008 10:11:50 PM
FYI: A $20,000.00 Reward is not indicative of discriminatory practices in searches. I, personally, enjoin searches for missing persons when I have the time and funds available as a volunteer unless I am hired to do the work, and the fact is that no one is invaluable. Not one missing person, no matter their color, lifestyle, creed, religious preference, sex, age, or size is considered more or less important on the search. When a search initiates through an organization like the Laura Center news feeds are often more harmful than good in that only the perpetrator gets the ego feed. It is devastating to a community, a family, a college or school, and in fact a State when one member is abducted or missing. You are not wrong in saying that some missing persons seem to get more attention quicker than others but I don't think it has to do with income level or skin color as much as it has to do with connectivity to other crimes, i.e., in Brianna Denison her abduction is connected to at least two or possibly four sexual assaults prior to her abduction so the publicity level and the response level developed from knowing that this abductor had a history, when he pushed himself to the limit and made his first (as far as it is known it was his first) kill, he attracted national attention (but if he had been raping male college students and the last one abducted had been a black or Hispanic male, he would have been put on the man hunt list with equal handed leveling. A stalker became a killer that is the fact. I am very interested in finding Nicholas Garza, too, many of us are. Thanks for helping.
Posted by: Redstone Psychology Research | Apr 22, 2008 5:21:31 PM
There was a female student about 30 years ago who was walking to take a final and forgot her lucky pen and went back to her dorm room and never made it back for her test,(something like that) no one has seen her or heard from her since, no clues, no body. Maybe a professor? Worker there?
Serial killer, maybe not even, maybe she is in someones house, celler, whatever, being a sex slave. Sort of like the girl that was taken hitchhiking and was a sex slave for like 10 years she was kept in a box type sleeping quarters and was brain washed. Finally she "escaped: there is more to the story but I gave you that brief description.
His coat, well rumor has it that he left his coat and walked accross campus to another party or soemthing like that. We all know that people from the South (he was from New Mexico) that they think that 60 degrees is like freezing so I can not imagine that in Feb. he would leave his coat.
New Hampshire, a few students went up there either the next day or so for a little vacation or something.
My theory is, that since he looked foreign and maybe said something to the wrong Vermont redneck or a bully at college (just because it is Middlebury College doesn't mean you don't have the bullies, prepies) and they (he) hit him, maybe he fell and hit his head. Instead of calling for help, whoever was there panicked and took care of the situation at hand. Hense, the trip to NH to dispose of the body.
I can not imagine that the police has not even looked in NH and so fourth, I think looking for the body in the river was good, but nothing came up. They need to look elsewhere.
If that was my kid, I would be screaming my head off for them to check the trunk of the car or SUV to see any traces of him or blood. Not enough is being done I feel.
If he wanted to ditch, and he was close to his mother i think that he would at least call or something.
By the way, My spelling sucks.
Posted by: Stella | May 2, 2008 8:51:04 AM
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