The media gets excited about one or two such missing women at a time- out of a field of thousands. There has to be several “hooks” and often a family that hires a media consultant to get the story out.
Nothing to do with race at all- just money. Sure- money is indirectly tied to race, but it’s the story, not the skin color.
I thought WWWA would stand for “Wild, Wild World of Abductions.”
It’s money/class, it’s hooks, it’s race. Roughly in that order.
Hey, how about the best of both worlds?
Pretty blonde white teenage girl attacked by shark!
Okay, so it isn’t clear if she is pretty, white or blonde, but it is known that the back of her hand was hurt and “Authorities said she had lost some blood.” I feel it was very important for me, here in Pittsburgh, to know about this so that I could plan accordingly.
No disrespect to the girl or her family is intended.
I can understand the appeal of a hook; a bug-eyed, large-breasted runaway bride may have more appeal among viewers than the daughter of abusive parents who runs away to Seattle. Still, the endless coverage takes away from the time that could be used to report on more important topics. CAFTA? London bombing? Karl Rove? CNN should be renamed the “C Natalee Network”; Larry King seems to be obsessed with her, and about half of the Larry King Show episodes are focused on Natalee. It’s far worse than the “baby in a well” stories that seemed all the rage in the 1980s.
26 posts and not one reference to JonBenet Ramsey…You guys are slacking.
Luckily for everyone (with the exception of public relations firms, cable news outlets, scrrenplay writers & literary agents), she didn’t lose an arm. I don’t think I’d be able to handle another Bethany Hamilton tour.
Well, to be fair, that Jon Benet Ramsey case had something extra going for it – that whole kiddie beauty contest thing she and her parents were involved in had a distinctly weird vibe to it.
You folks in Pittsburg don’t vacation in Florida?
All I know is there are none at my house.
Sigh.
They’re Dutch. Draining fields is in their blood.
The Memphis “Commercial Appeal” carried the story of the missing pregnant black woman from Philadelphia on the front page this week. According to the story, there are 48,000 people classified as missing, and 7,000 of those are black women. No further breakdown was provided. That’s a lot of missing people, and the odds of any of them getting a lot of publicity without a hook is pretty small.
The missing woman is 24, a looker and pregnant. According to the Commercial Appeal story, she has a relative (an uncle I think) who is a police officer and another relative with some influence (a journalist or lawyer or public official). My memory is faulty, and the story has disappeared from the CA’s web site. If I can find it, I’ll post a link. Meanwhile, here’s a link to a CNN story (with photo).
Here’s a link (scroll down a bit) that verifies the numbers I gave above.
The woman’s cousin is a city councilman.
The big hook to this story is that the publicity was initiated by bloggers.
I dunno. She’s 13 so if I get hot because she’s been injured it’s kinda creepy. :eek:
Though i expect some would be taken. We are blessed if none of her relatives post here. Not like that “I told you I was hardcore,” guy. (Was that this board? Wherever it was, we couldn’t make fun of him AT ALL without his bestest buddies it the whole wide world jumping on us.) :rolleyes:
Well, I can’t speak for Pittsburg, but here in Pittsburgh, we have, I think, the second oldest population in the country, so some proportion of Pittsburghers probably does go to Florida. 
Do you usually get hot over injured (or missing) women? Now that is creepy! 
To be fair, I heard about Latoyia days ago on my local news and CNN. Not the same coverage as Lacy Peterson or the runaway bride, but there were stories.