Missing White Woman Syndrome
MISSING WHITE WOMAN SYNDROME
Missing white woman syndrome, also known as missing pretty girl syndrome, is a tongue-in-cheek term coined by some media critics to reference a form of media hype in which excessive news coverage is devoted to a specific missing or murdered white women and girls, while virtually ignoring missing men, non-white women, or other news stories. According to these critics, reporting of these stories often lasts for several days or weeks, sometimes even months, and displaces reporting on other current events that some people consider more newsworthy, such as economics and politics. This syndrome appears to be most prevalent in U.S. media, but famous examples can also be found elsewhere in the world, e.g. the United Kingdom. The essential features of a missing person said to give rise to Missing White Woman Syndrome are sex, her race, (relative) prettiness, and age. These features are said to provoke positive discrimination in the reporting as news of the disappearance of a young white woman, and so to increase public interest in her disappearance. Missing people claims that cases which generate greatest publicity are those where missing persons are white, middle-class, female and from stable two-parent families, and where is no indication that such a missing person ran away from home. A working-class boy or an older woman is less likely to receive news coverage. Even in cases where foul play is suspected, if the victim is male, is of Afro-Caribbean or Asian descent, is a prostitute, has drug problems, is a persistent runaway, or has been in foster care, reporters are said to decide that their readership is less likely to relate to or empathize with the victim, and they reduce their coverage accordingly. The typical profile that must be fit: blonde, attractive, if possible blue-eyed, young, petite, vivacious and of a middle class or higher economic background creates the cases of MPWW which involve every local or national news to
Missing white woman syndrome, also known as missing pretty girl syndrome, is a tongue-in-cheek term coined by some media critics to reference a form of media hype in which excessive news coverage is devoted to a specific missing or murdered white women and girls, while virtually ignoring missing men, non-white women, or other news stories. According to these critics, reporting of these stories often lasts for several days or weeks, sometimes even months, and displaces reporting on other current events that some people consider more newsworthy, such as economics and politics. This syndrome appears to be most prevalent in U.S. media, but famous examples can also be found elsewhere in the world, e.g. the United Kingdom. The essential features of a missing person said to give rise to Missing White Woman Syndrome are sex, her race, (relative) prettiness, and age. These features are said to provoke positive discrimination in the reporting as news of the disappearance of a young white woman, and so to increase public interest in her disappearance. Missing people claims that cases which generate greatest publicity are those where missing persons are white, middle-class, female and from stable two-parent families, and where is no indication that such a missing person ran away from home. A working-class boy or an older woman is less likely to receive news coverage. Even in cases where foul play is suspected, if the victim is male, is of Afro-Caribbean or Asian descent, is a prostitute, has drug problems, is a persistent runaway, or has been in foster care, reporters are said to decide that their readership is less likely to relate to or empathize with the victim, and they reduce their coverage accordingly. The typical profile that must be fit: blonde, attractive, if possible blue-eyed, young, petite, vivacious and of a middle class or higher economic background creates the cases of MPWW which involve every local or national news to
Bibliography: www.msnbc.msn.com www.tvtropes.org www.abagond.wordpress.com Monica Radu, 1st year student of American Studies