Why Does the Media Cover Some Sensational Stories?
Ok - I’m on my soapbox this morning.
I waited and waited, patiently, for The Dallas Morning News to run a story as to why some sensational stories, e.g., violent murder, gets more media attention than others.
Bear with me; this is really more of a rhetorical question than one I really don’t know the answer to ….
In early July, a female real estate professional was stabbed 20-something times while she was alone manning a model home in a North suburb of Dallas. The story got tons of media attention because 1) She was white, 2) She was fairly well off, or so the papers reported on the outset (turns out she really wasn’t), 3) She was a divorced mother of two children, 4) She was a victim of domestic abuse, and 5) She led a fast-track, jet-set life (according to her friends). Heck; she even made it known to her friends that she was interested in a very rich husband and regularly appeared on Internet high-profile dating sites.
Did I mention she was white?
Today’s Dallas News story brought this story back to my mind - it tells a similar story of three other women - all minorities - who were victims of violent crime and lived in the Greater Dallas area. Sad, but true.
Turns out the story of Sarah Anne Walker (real estate professional) ran nationally on numerous morning talk shows, CNN with Nancy Grace, and will be featured soon on America’s Most Wanted. They haven’t found the killer - at first the police thought it was someone Sarah Anne knew because of the multiple stab wounds, but now they aren’t sure. There are so many possible suspects that it take weeks or months to solve - and we may never really know the true story.
Again back to my rhetorical question. Why is it that I know so much more about Sarah Anne’s story than that of Treva Lewis, Hai Ping Duan or Elizabeth Avery - the other three women who died of violent crimes in June and July?
Of course the media runs sensational stories to sell papers and attract viewers (anyone remember the little-known-case of O.J. Simpson?). It just makes me a bit disappointed that the story of a white, abused, seemingly wealthy woman with two children and a fancy lifestyle could take precedence over these other three - and countless other - victims.
Something’s really wrong.
July 21st, 2006 at 7:38 am
Hello Scott,
Welcome to the real world! I see this all the time in all types of news, not only bad news, but good news as well….
I’ve coined it the steretypical-minority-attribution effect; whereby bad news with a minority victim is suppressed and with a non-minority victim is highlighted; while good progressive news with a minority ‘hero’ is suppressed and a non-minority ‘hero’ is highlighted.
I would probably fall over in surprise if I saw blazing headlines and tv shows seeking for the murderer of a minority victim!
A good example here in Toronto is the much highlighted death of Jane Creba on Boxing day 2005, a young life wasted - much sympathies to the family, but if she had been a minority would the case have been given such publicity and would people have been so outraged?
This can only change when the minority/white balance of people in the high places of press and broadcast media corporations evens out so stories are evenly reported and your guess is as good as mine when that will be…..that in itself is another story of which I won’t go into.
Something has always been wrong, and it won’t change in a hurry.
July 21st, 2006 at 7:43 am
This particular phenomenon you speak of seems common to the newspaper business (which I used to be in myself). Here in the Tampa, Florida area, I’ve noticed the same thing has happened a few times over the past several years. I’m sure it happens in a lot of other locales. If the victim is white, female, attractive and from an upper middle class or wealthy background, or if anyone involved is a celebrity, the crime gets more attention. I think that may be in part because the person’s family or friends are aware of the media and how to use it.
That said, the St. Petersburg Times has aggressively covered the sad story of an 8-year-old girl raped earlier this week in broad daylight in a park in a middle-class St. Pete neighborhood in front of her 7-year-old brother. The mother left the two for a few minutes to walk back to their nearby apartment when this happened. An 18-year-old transient with mental problems, whose mother lives nearby and is afraid of him, has been arrested and charged. I know the accused is Asian; I can’t determine if the victim is white, black or something else entirely, since the stories have not used her family’s names or images. The neighborhood is breathing a sigh of relief that the guy’s been caught.
The bright spot of this story, to me, is how neighbors all pitched in to stop the attack as it was happening, and to help identify the rapist. The girl picked him out of a lineup - he’s been arrested before, but not for rape. It’s sad that kids aren’t safe in a crowded community park in the middle of the daytime.
Do you think the Times may have covered this story so thoroughly because the rape victim was a child? I hadn’t thought about that before, but now I’m wondering.
July 21st, 2006 at 7:56 am
Hi Wendy - well, we have Texas to thank for the Amber Alert; ever since this was created, it seems that children who are either missing, abused or killed get more press than adults. I think you’re on-point with your feeling that the story in Tampa was covered because of the age of the victim.
July 21st, 2006 at 8:32 am
Wendy,
You said, and I quote “I think that may be in part because the person’s family or friends are aware of the media and how to use it”.
I couldn’t agree more..but I also think it’s more of, ‘is the media aware of them and prepared to report it”; ‘them’ referring to the minorities.
If we are true to ourselves we would know that the first thing a murder victim’s family wants is for the murderer to be found, whether white or minority victim - now the onus lies on the media/broadcasting houses to report ALL such serious crimes whether involving white or minority. That is the only time things will change.
July 21st, 2006 at 11:59 am
If anyone had been killed in a cross fire on Boxing Day in downtown Toronto in the middle of big crowds seeking bargains, it would have made the front pages.
J Paul seems to forget about a black girl shot on a bus; when the gang shot a white woman buying a donut for her handicapped daughter was the Star supposed to skip the story because she was white?
When a Toronto real estate agent was found dead in a stairwell in the fanciest part of town, what do you dudes think should have happened? Skip the story because she was Jewish? Or run it because, well, Jewish isn’t quite white? Or at least qualifies as a minority.
And then there was the tiny chiild chopped up by her visible minority parents. Her death made it into the papers.
Hey guys — I know you see racism around every corner where you are, but JFC, what was Global TV supposed to do when the kidnap victim was Chinese? If they were as twisted as you portray them, what would have happened? Skip the storyy?
Well, we all know the story of Celilia. But some of the minority-negative info was hard to find in the coverage, prob ably edited out becasue it showed the Chines population in a bad light.
Deciding what stories to cover is a hard task for a newspaper editor, or a tv or radio news director. Partly, it’s a question of who is available to cover the story.
And how much coverage there is depends on how much info is available.
Instead of attributing racism to news editors, why not call up the cop shop and ask what color people cooperate with the cops and what color people do not cooperate? Ask them if there’s a difference in cooperation levels by ethnic heritage?
John Walsh needs people to help him run his stories.
And while you’re talking to the cops, ask just how cooperative they are to reporters investingating crimes. The PR guy for the mounties does not think anyone has a right to know about investigations involving mounties.
You can look it up.
Before attributing coverage to racisim, you might take a look a circulation, too. Newspapers write for their audiences, and audiences are interested in getting information from people like them, about people like them.
That’s why BET exists.
Up here in Toronto, you can learn that piece of info (the “like them stuff, not the BET stuff) from today’s Finnanacial Post; the words come out of the mouth of one of the United States of America’s finest PR men, Richard Edelman. He was interviewed by Diane Francis, in Toronto, about blogs.
And he is right.
News editing is hard; understanding how it works is apparently harder.
Yes, Nancy Grace is a disgrace, but Americans love her. Anderson Cooper is a great journalist, even if his tongue stumbles, but he doesn’t have the audience of Aaron Brown, who got fired.
Why do people watch O’Reilly? Why is Katie worth millions to read words someone else writes? How come Mansbridge gets his show bumped for some talent contest?
And I bet there are messes in Australia and Hong Kong and Belgium and Denmarkian newspapers and magazines and tgelevision news programs, too.
“The media” is weird. No getting around that.
The story buried in Toronto right now involves a gang killing of a bookmaker who worked in a Daimler Chrysler plant. Did it get dropped b ecause there are people with Italian names involved? And if so, is it because the editors are anti-Italian or pro-Italian?
BAK
July 21st, 2006 at 1:13 pm
I will never live this down but…for once I agree with Brian Kilgore on a point: Nancy Grace is a disgrace.
I have a recurring nightmare that I lapse into a coma, awake in ten years, turn on the television and there is Nancy Grace with “Day 3,547 of the Natalie Holloway story and yet another catch-and-release in Aruba!”
It’s all about the money, folks, all about the money.
July 22nd, 2006 at 5:23 am
You’re also forgetting a basic tenent of news … what is unusual is more newsworthy than what is common.
Unfortunately, a black person in the United States is far more likely to be a victim of violent crime than a wealthy white woman. That’s just the way it is.
What is more unusual? A young girl kidnapped and killed in Aruba while on a school trip under mysterious circumstances — or a drive-by shooting in a ghetto? Both are tragic … one is more newsworthy than the other.
July 23rd, 2006 at 2:14 am
[Moderator: please accept the following reply in place of my earlier version. Thank you!]
Newspapers are businesses, and the purpose of a business is to generate profits.
Profits come from selling products the public wants and is willing to buy.
If the public doesn’t want a product, it won’t buy it. This applies to cars (Yugo, Acura Vigor, De Lorean, Edsel), consumer goods (7-Up Gold, Betamax VCR, New Coke, Pepsi Blue, the Segway), computer hardware (Apple’s Pippin, Sega Saturn), movies (Gigli, Glitter, Crossroads), video games (E.T., Pac Man for the Atari 2600, Star Wars: Force Commander), magazines (House Beautiful Kitchens & Baths, Absolute New York, CMO, Book, Brill’s Content, Embedded Linux) and television shows (Dolly!, The Chevy Chase Show, That 80’s Show).
The logic is rigorous: If the newspaper was offering for sale a social perspective for which the public wasn’t willing to buy, it would soon join the ranks of the Betamax and Yugo.
That the newspaper continues to thrive says more about its readers than the values of its editorial board.
July 23rd, 2006 at 6:56 am
I’m sure someone will correct me, but my observation from daily reading of the printed Washington Post (the word printed gives away my age range) is that, here in the nation’s capital, race or color is not mentioned in reporting of crime victims except where a description of the suspect is provided or gang activity is involved (e.g., MS 15). Showing a photo of either the victim or the suspect makes it different, of course. We used to be the “murder capital” — but we’ve been surplanted even though we are in the midst of a crime spree right now.
I think sometimes neither the police or the news media know very much about the details. I regularly Tivo Cold Case on A&E, and they definitely report on vicitims of all races. There was a series of killings of African-American prostitutes in the St. Louis area that it took years to solve, but that didn’t mean the police weren’t working on it. It turned out that an African-American man had killed the victims and he used the news media (St. Louis Post Dispatch) to guide police to his identity by writing a letter about his crime to a reporter.
July 24th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Interesting perspective on the Realtor — the white Realtor — who was killed. While I believe in signficant media bias, I don’t see such coverage as being race-related. I think it has more to do with the extreme violent nature of the crime in a seemingly rural, crime-free area. There’s plenty of media coverage to go around, black, white and everything in between. Think of the young Hispanic boy who disappeared, or yesterday’s three hours of *yawn* coverage of the truckin’ African-American who held a hostage for hours on end. Coverage of victims is everywhere…Red and yellow, black and white, media coverage’s all a-sight…the media love dramatic stories all day long.
–Roy
July 27th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
The victim you mention was in her place of business, doing her job. That alone makes her case unusual enough to warrant media attention.
September 21st, 2006 at 11:08 am
What it boils down to is a combination of economics and psychology. Ron Iseri explained the economics issue quite well but he left out why wealthy whites are the center of media sympathy. We feel sympathy for people who we identify with. Although wealthy people rarely identify with poor people, poor people identify with the wealthy because they wish they were wealthy. Most American whites do not know enough black people to identify with them. In fact recent psycological research shows that although few american whites are overtly racist most of the subjects studied showed subconcious predjudices against blacks. Since whites are the majority consumers in America it would seem unlikely that we are ready for racially balanced news coverage.