Media worship at the feet of white middle class women. Why?

[prolesunited]

Anybody have any viable theories why stories about women such as Peterson and Hacking gain so much national attention? Don't get me wrong. I am saddened and disturbed by what has happened to them, but dozens of people are killed every day in the U.S.

Why do these women's stories get thrust in the spotlight? Can you remember any women of color getting the same treatment?

It's been the same with the kidnappings of little girls. Are no boys being kidnapped? Are no girls of color victims?

Is it simply a media distraction like sharks or is there some more subtle message that's being put forth?

[jpgray]

1. Covering such things is cheap, and there are more white women than black

That's my first shot. If you've read Ted Turner's recent article, he goes on about how corporate ownership tends to lead to less expensive coverage that whores for ratings.

[prolesunited]

3. No, I haven't read it

What publication? Is it available online?

[jpgray]

5. Here you go, from Washington Monthly

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.turner.html

Excellent article on the state of media today.

[prolesunited]

37. Thanks!

I'll take a look.

[displacedtexan]

2. White middle class women spend the most $ in the USA.

Easily Targeted audience.

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Exactly

[kaitykaity]

4. How about Jon Benet Ramsey and Jessica Lynch?

Standard of beauty.

[AspenRose]

38. That's my opinion as well

Women of color do not fit the "American" standard of beauty. I mean geez, all you have to do is turn on the TV and it's all Britney, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Cameron Diaz, etc. (all-blonde) all the time. You've even got a black blonde woman (Beyonce) who manages to be the exception to the rule.

Being a teenager of color, maintaining the features God gave you and attending public school in this culture must be challenging.

[kaitykaity]

41. Oh, there's a lot packed in that post.

We had a blonde college co-ed disappear here in Oregon
a while ago and the local nets had her picture and home
videos shaking her booty on the beach on CONSTANTLY.

It's like pretty girl/lots of face time.

Ugh.

[doctorbombeigh]

6. White, attractive, pregnant, murdered - the perfect storm of tv news.

They'll cover this into the ground. The message is, of course, that these women (and sometimes children like the Ramsey girl) are more valuable as human beings, and worthy of more media attention. It's sick, but that's the country we live in.

Single women voters are a targeted Dem voter group. The more Fox scares the shit out of them, the better for the Repubs. Every time I flipped past Fox during the convention, they were covering this story.

[JDPriestly]

9. Have money, will buy.

White women spend money on things advertised on the media. The media is only about selling advertisers' products -- nothing else.

[olddem43]

17. You're right - if they were poor and unattractive it wouldn't

be a story. Women like that are probably murdered every day somewhere. Murder isn't supposed to happen to women in this socio-economic group. Pregnancy adds a little more to it but I heard that this latest one was only pregnant a few weeks (must have missed a period). Of course, the Peterson story has the extra-marital sex angle too. O.J. lacked the pregnancy issue but, of course, was a household name celebrity.

[gWbush is Mabus]

8. it's the PRO-LIFE AGENDA - giving rights to fetuses

getting Bush's base riled up and ready to vote.

[Pathwalker]

20. Yep, you get it. The point is that these women were pregnant.

And, if you listen a little closer to the media - they are referring to the fetus as ANOTHER PERSON. "Her unborn infant, the baby was also murdered." Not once do they say FETUS. They are programming us - a few of us aren't buying it.



Humorous answer: Because they have a wierd foot fetish???

[FizzFuzz]

24. goddamed Shrub using this angle in his campaign ads, that

the "Lacy Peterson Law" would keep women and babies safe and that Kerry voted against it...blah blah. Makes my head explode. The RW doesn't give one flying crap about women, not as human beings anyway. As incubators and possessions maybe. God how I hate being defined by my reproductive function.

[DemBones DemBones]

36. Elizabeth Smart wasn't pregnant, JonBenet Ramsey wasn't pregnant.

It's all about YOUNG and ATTRACTIVE women or girls, and it helps if they lived in a big house before they were kidnapped and/or murdered. Pregnancy helps, too, especially if they didn't live in such a big house! A family that can be sympathetically portrayed by the media also helps.

[Caution]

10. Because the media still labors under the delusion that

most white American women are stay at home moms and they are watching TV all day long and therefore want to see stories about people "just like them" and that these women make up the bulk of the news watching audience.

[cally]

25. Cite statistics for your stereotypes because you are wrong

Most women work and do not sit at home watching soaps all day.

[cally]

26. Fear helps keep women submissive

If you fear men then you are too scared to challenge the patriarchy. Learning about women killed, abused, raped by their loved ones helps reinforce how lucky most of us are for the men in our lives. It keeps us quiet. Thank you for all who don't succumb to the fear in our lives.

[Caution]

31. please read my ENTIRE post

i quite clearly stated that the media is delusional about this aspect of america.

[FizzFuzz]

29. Caution is not reinforcing that stereotype, he's refuting it., saying

a delusion that the media rely on.

[Caution]

30. thanks :)

[cally]

32. Sorry I misread/misunderstood your post

I see that I was wrong. Sorry.

[Caution]

33. sokay

and hey you just proved that you are a better person (not that there was ever any doubt!) than our President because you can admit to and apologize for a mistake! :yourock:

[FizzFuzz]

34. sure thing :) Hey, btw, you two helped me hit the 500 mark. WOW!

:thumbsup:

[playahata1]

40. The poster to whom you respond is NOT perpetuating stereotypes.

S/he is referring to the powers-that-be in the MEDIA; THEY are the ones doing the stereotyping, not him/her.

[lolly]

11. Worship, or voyeurism?

All these white women in distress stories seem more like warnings to me.

Look at all the evil people out there who will kill "our" wimmin. You need US to protect you, girls.

Showing murdered men would make it look as if men are vulnerable too, and we don't want that. Men are strong and in charge, and women are weak and need men to protect them.

[Bridget Burke]

13. Except that "evil people out there" aren't usually the killers.

The killers are more likely to be the men who are supposed to "protect" them.

[doctorbombeigh]

15. Exactly so.

There's an entire channel devoted to the game - Lifetime. I call it the "White Women In Peril" channel.

[FizzFuzz]

27. ugh the Lifetime channel

Another reason I don't watch TV--I just catch occasional snips when my hun watches. But the Lifetime channel focuses on this crap?? That figures, and its supposed to be the "women's" network, isn't it? Ugh. How can women support this shit? Women targeted mass produced crap does some pretty serious message-mongering. I notice it at the store when I look at the Enquirer type stuff near check out: ugly women are bad, aging is bad, women who don't know their place, aren't husband-child centered enough are bad, babies are good, mommies are good, feminists are bad, only bad girls get raped, etc. Makes my head explode. I wish women would start boycotting this crap, but then its everywhere, it would be like trying to boycott plastic.

[KurtNYC]

12. Classic 'damsel in distress' stuff

If they didn't cover these, they would have to cover wars and the economy.

And it fans the flames of generalized fear.

[kskold]

22. Outrage, not fear

And it fans the flames of generalized fear.

Not fear, outrage. Strangers who kidnap children produce fear - what if it happened to one of my children?

But husbands who kill their wives and children don't create general fear. You have to think it might happen to you to be afraid of it - and most of us would never believe our loved ones could do that to us.

So - the Peterson case and this one produces outrage. "What was wrong with him? How could he do such a thing? This never used to happen. We were raised right - these young people aren't being taught properly. We need to return to the kind of child-rearing and eudcation that produces good, honest, law-abiding citizens."

The conclusions drawn are either that the husband wasn't raised right, or that he was raised right and was lead astray by the wicked, permissive, secular modern world. And the solution is a return to the standards and practices of a Golden Age of civility, respect, responsibility and piety. (And, imagine that, the Republican party is the only one leading the way in that direction.)

[eyesroll]

14. This was big, here, a few years ago

Right around the time Elizabeth Smart, et. al., disappeared, Milwaukee lost a little girl named Alexis Patterson. Her stepfather walked her to the corner by her school, and then she vanished. Students said she made it to the playground, but wasn't in class. She was reported missing after she didn't come home.

This made the news in Milwaukee for days, and weeks, afterword. Signs in shop windows, and on trucks, pleaded for information and her safe return. Every year, in May, she returns to the news -- it's been more than two years, and she hasn't been found.

This received almost no media attention outside of Wisconsin and perhaps northern Illinois. She was featured on America's Most Wanted, but her case received few leads. The stepfather is a "person of interest," but not a suspect. They have nowhere to go.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth was receiving wall-to-wall national coverage. When she was found safe and healthy, thank God, news anchors interrupted coverage nationwide. Part of it was because it's so rare to get good news out of kidnapping cases; part of it was that Elizabeth never left the public consciousness.

Alexis, on the other hand, has all but faded from memory, even that of Milwaukee. Her parents and friends keep praying.

What was the difference between Elizabeth and Alexis?

Elizabeth is young, pretty, white. Her parents are wealthy, eloquent, educated. She seems the all-American girl, riding her bicycle with her younger sister. She's not too different from Jon-Binet Ramsey before her, or Lacey Peterson or Lori Hacking later --young, pretty, white, well-off. They look good on screen, eliciting sympathy from that precious 18-44 demographic.

Alexis is (was?) African American. Young, too young and not pageant-trained to be called "pretty," but cute. Her parents are not wealthy. Her stepfather has a criminal past. Not exactly the family that the news media -- most of whom, at least the higher-ups who make coverage decisions, are well-to-do, white, all-American.

[jpgray]

16. Thanks for this--it backs up a lot of the above posts (nt)

[sandnsea]

18. the little women need protecting

Keep the white woman afraid and the white man the hero who needs to protect her. Republican social structure.

[merh]

19. Keeps the anti-abortion issue alive without arguing

anti-abortion. The killing of a pregnant mother, the killing of a fetus. Helps the anti-abortion folks argument, since the woman was pregnant, the son of a gun deserves to be tried for 2 murders. (imho)

[FizzFuzz]

21. I agree with all these factors--and also there's a strong history of focus

on death and violence wreaked on appealing girls. Sex and violence are exciting.

Look at any expression of white culture from any time in history and you will see paintings, stories and songs of poor innocent PRETTY women or little girls murdered, raped etc. (Pretty is a vital part of the equation here). Because these expressions of culture (or what filters to us through the mainstream) are arbited by white men, the objects of fascination are white women; it is women who turn men (the majority of them) on; it is women who are "Other" and therefore, men feel safe leering at their gory deaths. (And women can feel safe by imagining that they wouldn't make the same mistakes that poor girl did. Plus,in male dominated society, women become used to disidentifying with other women, because there are so few positive images of women to identify with.) Creating stories (or focusing on the actual stories) of victimized males makes men way too uncomfortable. A media or culture whose decisions are made by men will continue to look at females as the objects when it comes to violent titillating death.

So, it plays to the fascination we have as humans with the dark side and what can happen to us, and if it happens to others, it somehow safeguards us--if we're men, because that stuff only happens to girls; or if we're women, because we won't do what they did ...yadda yadda.

[prolesunited]

42. Very interesting perspective

I wonder if there has been any rhetorical or psychological analysis done on this. It would make for a fascinating academic study.

[madrchsod]

23. there are more white women

than black women to sell soap to..it`s advertising dollars that drives the story.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

28. $$$$$$$$$

Next question?

[DemBones DemBones]

35. Because we're hot! No, more likely because we do more shopping

than other demographics, shopping for products advertised on television for our families, and have more disposable income for "luxury" items, too.

Just an educated guess.

But I think you have to be young as well as attractive to generate interest.

[DemBones DemBones]

39. I just want to emphasize that YOUTH is as important as beauty.

If Laci Peterson had been a grandmother, there'd be a hell of a lot less interest, although she'd have likely been an attractive older woman.

How many older actresses get decent parts in movies? Sean Connery and Michael Douglas, just to cite two obvious examples, both get far younger actresses as their leading ladies. In real life, men often choose younger trophy wives (see: Douglas, Michael; Trump, Donald.)

:grr: Ignore me and I'll hit you with my cane! :grr:

[Karenina]

43. Breck Girls = "Good Hair"

Don't mind me. :evilgrin:

[TexasSissy]

44. Because it touches people. The women were both pregnant,

vulnerable, and trusting in their husbands. And it is the trusting husbands who stand accused.

It became national news because she wasn't found murdered....she was missing. An APB went out. Once the nation becomes involved, many want to watch the events unfold. They are interested.

Remember when all the black children were being murdered in Atlanta years ago? That was covered all the time on the news, and that was before 24/7 cable news.

I'd say that something about the stories bring them national attention: the missing part is key, then there's the mystery, strange circumstances, etc.

Other stories become nat'l, like the woman in Houston who ran over her husband and killed him as he came out of a hotel after having a liason with his mistriss. The girl who was kidnapped and it was caught on videotape. The boy who was killed years ago by a couple of older male friends...that was covered exhaustively, including the trial.

If Hacking had been black or another minority, it still would've made nat'l news, if the circumstances were the same. Boys aren't kidnapped as often as girls. I don't know if any pregnant women of color went missing recently, as opposed to being murdered (which is fairly common, sad to say). If you find out that there were, let us know.