[Steeltrap]

From the Boston Globe:

THE MEDIA
Two missing girls, but only one big story
Some see race, class affecting coverage

By Mark Jurkowitz, Globe Staff, 6/19/2002

You'd have to be living in a cave not to have heard of Elizabeth Smart. You'd have to be living in Wisconsin to have heard of Alexis Patterson.

Smart, a blond 14-year-old, was taken, apparently at gunpoint, from the bedroom of her family's million-dollar Salt Lake City home on June 5. Patterson, a 7-year-old black girl, disappeared on her way to school in central Milwaukee on May 3. Both girls are missing under tragic circumstances. But while Smart's disappearance has become a national media event and her face a familiar sight to millions of television viewers, Patterson's case is largely unknown outside the Milwaukee area.

For example, a Globe Nexis search of US print sources found 332 stories that mentioned Smart in the first paragraph compared to only 45 that highlighted Patterson.

Some observers say the dramatically different way the two apparent abductions have played out speaks volumes about the media - and society's - unbalanced treatment of race and class. ''Whatever happens in a black neighborhood doesn't really surprise anybody,'' says Earl Caldwell, a veteran black journalist and broadcaster. ''The public is conditioned to expect that. We take the privilege, and we equate it with the quality of the people.''

Yet, others insist that from a news perspective, the critical difference between the two girls is not skin color or neighborhood, but the nature of the two crimes.

''The Smart story is a better story, and this is me applying my news judgment,'' counters Condace Pressley, president of the National Association of Black Journalists and assistant program director at news/talk station WSB-AM in Atlanta.'' It strikes at the heart of every parent's fear, regardless of race. Here, this family is at home and in the dead of night, an intruder comes into the home and, at gunpoint, takes a child from her bed.''

Like Patterson, ''a lot of children are taken off the street and we don't come close to taking these cases,'' says Catherine Crier, a Court TV host. ''What [the Smart story] is saying is `we're not safe in our homes.' The common fear, whether you're Asian or black or white, is that someone invades your home.'' Crier is keeping viewers updated on the Smart story, and the Court TV Web site links to a series of photos and descriptions of Smart with toll-free numbers and a solicitation for donations. And while Fox's ''America's Most Wanted'' did a segment on Patterson in May, they have spent portions of the last two weeks' shows on Smart.

There may be other explanations for the discrepancy in the amount of coverage, including the media savvy of those involved in the cases. In a story on Saturday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quoted a ''Good Morning America'' spokeswoman saying that the program had energetically attempted to contact the local police, and Patterson's family and had heard nothing back.

And even those who don't think racism or classism is an issue point to more complex, but related, factors - the dictates of the marketplace and the demographics of most newsrooms - to account for the imbalance in the treatment of the two tragedies.

Jim Corcoran, a communcations professor at Simmons College, ticks off several crimes in recent memory involving white, well-to-do victims that blew up into media megastories: the Charles Stuart murder saga in Boston, the attack on the Central Park jogger, and the JonBenet Ramsey murder. ''You have upper- to middle-class people running the newsroom,'' he notes. ''It's their fears playing out.''

''I don't think anybody wants to minimize the victimization of a black person over a white person. It's just that they don't identify with it,'' says James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University. ''Print and electronic media tend to give their audiences what they want to read and see on the news. Because most Americans are white, they would tend to identify more [with a white victim]. It reminds them of their own vulnerabilities.''

''I'm a news manager,'' says Pressley. ''We all know who our listeners are, we all know who are viewers are, we all know who are readers are.'' The Smart case, she adds, ''is a story that touches a majority of our audience.''


This story ran on page D1 of the Boston Globe on 6/19/2002.
© Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.