Bob Herbert has a really interesting Op-Ed at the NYTimes about how the coverage of white murders tends to be more extensive than the coverage of the murder of people of color. He writes,
[T]he press is still very color conscious in the way it goes about covering murder. Editors may not be asking, "What color is that victim?" But, on some level, they're still thinking it.Which is why we've heard so little about an awful story out of Chicago. Some three dozen public school students have been murdered since the school year began, most of them shot to death. These children and teenagers have been killed in a wide variety of settings and situations -- while riding a city bus, playing in parks, sitting in the back seats of cars, in gang disputes, in robberies, in the crossfire of sidewalk shootouts.
It's an immense and continuing tragedy. But these were nearly all African-American or Latino kids, so the coverage has been scant.
In contrast, the news media gave the public enormous amounts of information about the Wesleyan student, Johanna Justin-Jinich, and -- in another big story -- about Julissa Brisman, the masseuse who had advertised on Craigslist and was killed in a Boston hotel room last month.
I think that we can recognize the tragedy in these stories and still have an analysis of the rate of coverage of different communities. I actually think that Herbert is giving them an easy way out suggesting that it is just that mainstream media frequently overlooks the deaths and murders of people of color. When people of color are involved in the death or murder of a white person, that is definitely headline news. Or when a person of color lives up to their given "stereotype," i.e. terrorists, cop-killers, "hookers," etc., that is also all over the news.
So, while Herbert is suggesting that the stories that cover the murder of women of color, poor people and other disenfranchised communities are far less, it is not just that they are overlooked, it is that they are strategically woven into the narrative of good verse evil. White women are pitted against communities of color, contrasting innocent verses guilty. Not only does it tell us, as Herbert suggests, how we see each other, it also shows us that white women are considered helpless, innocent, and need the support, coverage, protection and watchful eye of the news media, along with legal counsel, police and politicians. And that people of color are perpetrators of crime, always guilty, not victims and therefore need our harshest penalties and strictest of eyes.
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This is so dispiriting to read. In many ways we haven't moved on at all! When I worked in the criminal justice system it was widely recognised that women were usually dealt with more harshly than men for similar offences. And if the woman happened to be black, heaven help her. A custodial sentence was much more likley.
Jane
Do you think that this is because female criminals are more likely to be seen as an aberration, in the sense that they do not conform to traditional gender norms of the meek and mild sex, whereas society almost expects men to behave violently or rashly?
Well, then you'll be glad to know that the trend you speak of has reversed itself since you retired from the criminal justice system. Today, women get significantly lighter sentencing, on average, than men who commit the same crimes. Interestingly, black and hispanic men get harsher sentences than white men, but black and hispanic women get lighter sentences than white women. See page 134ff of this: http://www.friendsfw.org/PA_Courts/Race_Gender_Report.pdf
As for the article, to answer the titular question: no shit, Sherlock.
I agree that the media rarely portrays crime accurately, instead preferring to stick to the narrative of white, blond women as the eternal victims and black men as the eternal aggressors e.t.c.
However, the estimated population of the USA (306,400,000), in conjunction with our collective goldfish-like attention spans, means that the media has to tell an impossible number of stories, in an impossibly short amount of time (especially if we take into account current events and politics locally, nationally and abroad).
So is it any surprise that the media resort to attention-grabbing stories which reinforce pre-existing prejudices?
Well, I live in Chicago I had no idea the amount of murdering of students going on here. I think I've read maybe one or two stories but that's about it. And I read the newspaper every day. So while you can maybe excuse* the national media for not picking up some of these stories...what about my local media? It seems everyone is dropping the ball here.
*I'm not saying I excuse them because I don't. But that seemed to be what The Boggart was saying.
I'm not condoning the current situation, I was merely offering my opinion about why it exists.
I'm not saying you were condoning the media's actions. It's just by saying things like "the media has to tell an impossible number of stories, in an impossibly short amount of time" is giving them an out. If that's the case then they still don't have to make almost every single story they tell be one that reinforces horrid stereotypes. I'm just not willing to give them that out.
And, like I said, the local media in Chicago has dropped the ball as well. And they have far fewer stories to focus on and pick and choose from then the national media.
I wasn't "giving them an out".
I concluded that the fact that the media has to tell an impossible number of stories, in an impossibly short amount of time, leads them to cherry pick narratives which confirm to the majority prejudices of their audience.
How is that in any way excusing their behaviour? We need to recognise that the media don't exist in isolation; the relationship between media and society is a symbiotic one and I was simply putting it in a societal context.
I wasn't "giving them an out".
I concluded that the fact that the media has to tell an impossible number of stories, in an impossibly short amount of time, leads them to cherry pick narratives which confirm to the majority prejudices of their audience.
We need to recognise that the media don't exist in isolation; the relationship between media and society is a symbiotic one and I was simply putting it in a societal context.
However, it is certainly the case that the local Chicago media were asleep on the job.
I hate it when people let the media off the hook by blaming the audience.
When you run a media outlet, be it a one person blog or a major metropolitan newspaper or a worldwide TV network, you make editorial decisions.
And those decisions reflect all sorts of biases and prejudices and political views.
Honest media folks admit that fact.
The dishonest ones blame the audience - when the viewers do not create the content, the media outlet does.
So, when an editor decides that the murder of a Black women deserves a 2 inch story on page 55, but the murder of a White woman deserves a front page story, with a picture on the cover, a sidebar on the victim's life and another sidebar on the investigation that is an editorial decision!
The audience didn't make the decision - the editor did!
Its interesting that the message the media sends about white women vs. communities of color is the exact opposite of what we need to do in order to end the current politics of oppression.
Patriarchy in full force keeping the oppressed divided and pitted against eachother so that we never fight the real threat.
I'm not American but was recently considering some job opportunities in the U.S. and was trying to search for some state statistics to see which areas would be right for me. I found a promising looking site and noticed that they had a menu of most-visited statistics. Number three (and the only one in the menu relating to crime)? "Crime rate - by victim: White."
Be careful of a lot of the websites that purport to advise international students coming to the US.
Many of them are run by White racists, who are openly biased against African Americans.
Obviously, the site you encountered was one of those sites.
Another one of these sites blatantly tells international students to avoid any contact with African Americans, because all of us are criminals!
Bottom line - be very suspect of any of those sites.
I get the Chicago news stations and although they often mention the shooting it is in a very matter of fact way. Often with things like "Another school aged child was shot on the south side of chicago. This brings the total up to 36." Then go into crazed in depth examination of Drew Peterson.
A really good example of the bias between victims is when you look at Jon Benet Ramsey vs. the Girl X case in Chicago. The same time that Jon Benet was found dead and very young girl ( I want to say 8) was found on the stairway in an apartment in Chicago. She had been gang raped and mutilated to the point that, although she survived, she is still in assisted care housing. I was in Chicago and I never heard about her once. The only way I found out was that on our news they recently mentioned that now that she's turning 19 she can't be housed where she is anymore and has nowhere to go.
I've tried google searching her and can't find much and even when I went back on the news site to find the story it was not there.
I have too many of these examples to count. When I was a kid in Denver, CO, my dad was a Family Violence (includes child victims) prosecutor and the number of cases of murders and violent assaults on black children was astounding compared to the tiny, if any, media coverage these stories received. Even as a young person, I remember being shocked that I would know about all these cases of young black kids being killed and NO ONE ELSE WOULD.
The very same year JonBenet was murdered, he had a case of a little black girl the same age and just as beautiful and tragically destroyed as JonBenet. Her name was Ashley Gray, but when I would ask people about her, no one would know her name, even though it was a case that took up nearly 2 years of my dad's career and a lot of his emotion and passion.
I do remember one case he worked on that received a lot of media attention though. Yep-it was the year he was asked to come to Boulder as a special prosecutor for JonBenet.
It's hardly a consolation because the media paid no attention, but just so people know, the DA's office in many (can't speak for all) of these cases still takes the crime to heart and prosecutes the SOBs. I know Ashley Grey's rapist and murderer got his.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/sneed/1555204,CST-NWS-sneed03.article
Is this the little girl? "Girl X" (Now identified as Shatoya Currie?
What a horrible story. I actually WISH this story had been made more popular...maybe if the powers that be heard of rapists leaving permanent tissue damage and injury in their victims (in addition to the psychological scars of sexual assault/physical battery that comes with subduing a victim), some of those rape kits sitting on shelves in police HD would MOVE.
This is the thing--I am not surprised (still horrified and wish every nightmare like this was investigated and prosecuted with all available resources) at this story.
I understand the idea of "valuing" nonwhite victims....how many people who have ANY knowledge about violent crime against women or children would be shocked to know that child abuse, gang shootings, or violence happens in poor (and/or) neighborhoods? How many would be surprised to hear, "This is the 12th student shot on the grounds of school 'X' this week"?
It's surprising (not so surprising any more, eh?) to hear about middle class kids in Boulder going on a rampage...unfortunately it is not surprising to hear about a gang shooting outside of a South Central high school.
Bob Herbert also wrote about PARENTS and the communities themselves when he discussed indifference to adolescent violence (specifically in Chicago)
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/07/14/opinion/14herbert.html?_r=1&hp
Is the blame solely on us--(white/non-poor, apparently) society at large? How much can we do in the short term even if we ARE aware (without wall-to-wall media coverage) of the frequency and reality of high crime rates and victimization?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini-Green
"Girl X" is also in the Wiki entry on Cabrini Green
The news media covers the bodies that we understand as valuable. When Kaylee Anthony went missing, there were several other little girls of color that were also missing and yet the media made no mention of them. While the missing little white girl syndrome does to some degree impart a victim status, it also teaches young white girls that they are worth something to the world whereas; children of color learn that their lives are unimportant.
The media is just like any other agent of socialization, part of its duties is to reaffirm our understanding of how bodies are encoded. When we consider that it continues to be run by rich white men of privilege can we really be surprised about the erasure of POC? It is less about conveying news of the day, as it is about teaching messages in dominant social discourse which includes our imbalance in value.
It's enraging but I know it too well. My husband teaches at a high school in a predominately Latino neighborhood. Monday his kids told him that there had been three shootings over the weekend and we'd heard nothing on the news. They were so sweet too telling him to be sure not to drive the surface streets but get straight on the highway. And then shockingly said well things are getting better you can be out on the street or near your windows later than you used to be able to!!! It's unbelievable to me that children (CHILDREN!!) in the US have to live in fear of their lives everyday and we aren't talking about it everyday but instead as MzBitca points out are trying to figure out a psychopath like Peterson.
The sees conspiracies me wants to say that crimes on rather than by marginalized people are not reported so that the privileged who would care don't actually get any odd ideas about trying to change it.
In A word naive. You are never going to see accurate reporting on violence in the neighborhoods of color because whiteness does not want to own its culpability period. The violence does not occur in a vacuum. It occurs because of a lack of employment, poorly funded education, lack of childcare, poverty, etc and etc..this is all a part of how systemic racism attacks bodies of color.
the one thing i want to note (and this in no way contradicts anything said above) is that, from what i've seen, the media especially loves to focus on unsolved cases. yanno, the killer is "at large" or "the body is missing" or what have you, at the expense of a "more straightforward" crime. i don't know if this can explain bias in the reporting of crime, but it does, in my view, interfere with what i really want to know about, which is an essential understanding of the prevalence and nature of crime.
Over the weekend this guy I knew was murdered in Buffalo. It was his graduation weekend and his parents were in town to celebrate with him. He was shot twice in the back leaving a bar on Saturday night. Police have found no motive for the killing.
He was a great person who studied hard to earn a degree. His future was robbed from him that night. He also happened to be black.
I hate to think that if he were white and/or a pretty woman the news media would have picked up his story. Sadly, I am guessing that if he were a cute (white) girl that it would be all over the news by now. The media seems to love to revel in how beautiful certain female victims were.
Oh God, my condolences. Actually, I heard about his murder on the news a lot over the weekend here in the city, probably because he's from here and had just graduated. I hope you're doing as well as you can given the circumstances...
I believe it all has to do with who we (by we I mean society) perceive has potential. We view white, beautiful, middle/upper class women as having potential therefore their deaths are viewed as more tragic.
Meanwhile,since our society veiws people of color and the poor has having less importance and therefore less potential to improve or affect the world in a positive way, society does not care about them. It's the hierarchy of bodies designed to continue the belief that only certain people matter and affect the world. That's why they always talk about how smart/attractive/rich/athletic the victims are. It creates this belief that the death of certain people is more tragic than the death of others.
I quite agree with this, and with the points Renee and others made above. Your "potential" point is reflected in the fact that these hyped victims are inevitably young and quite often middle class. Young Latino and Afr-Am kids? Meh, look at the neighborhoods [read: the culture of "those people"] they lived in--"it was inevitable."
But I think perhaps we can also add to it that this issue of the inevitable "beauty" of the Euro victims is a consumption of sorts. I have rarely--if ever--seen a nationally televised media storm about a visibly disabled Euro female victim, a very overweight Euro female victim, or even an older (over age 40) victim of the same demographics.
There is really something unseemly about the media's constant splashing across the screen of a fair-skinned, blemishless, pert little face, and audiences instant arrestment they see it. It's almost as though audiences are transfixed by the symmetry of their features, and even, in their horror over the crime being reported, are consumed by it and consuming HER anew, every time CNN or Fox airs that famous pretty face.
"We" don't decide what gets in the newspapers or on TV.
A handful of upper class White people - most of whom are men - make those decisions.
So "we" don't decide who's worth being covered and who isn't.
Don't blame the general public for the racism and sexism of the rulers of this country.
I too was perplexed by where Herbert's column stopped. I wondered: Why isn't he giving more concrete examples of egregious crimes against people of color that the media's overlooked? And why is he letting everybody off the hook with "the Daily News has changed radically since those days?" I want a follow-up that goes into greater depth.
I do think, though, that compared with the racial imbalance in covering who gets killed, there is almost a racial balance in covering who kills. I assume this is in large part because the media loves a "look at what ordinary white kids and dysfunctional couples in the suburbs LIKE THE ONES WHO LIVE NEXT DOOR TO YOU do!" story. Based on crime stereotypes, that seems to be what is considered newsworthy a lot of the time.
Right. They love to talk about how the "normal kid who had everything turned to killing prostitutes. How could it have happened? What could have been his motive?"
People Magazine pissed me off with their article on the "Craigslist Killings" with this exact commentary. A white man with a college education who was going to have the perfect wedding in just a couple of months. Yet he looks for females offering sexual services, robs, and kills them. No motive determined yet.
I was angry at work the entire afternoon and wrote a letter, which I doubt they'll print. But it made me feel better.