Missing white woman syndrome

Missing white woman syndrome is a term which is used by social scientists and media commentators in reference to the media coverage, especially on television, of missing-person cases involving young, attractive, white, upper middle class women or girls compared to the relative lack of attention towards missing women who were not white, of lower social classes, or of missing men or boys. Although the term was coined in the context of missing-person cases, it is sometimes used of coverage of other violent crimes. The phenomenon has been highlighted in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and other predominantly white countries.

American news anchor Gwen Ifill is widely considered the originator of the phrase. Charlton McIlwain defined the syndrome as "white women occupying a privileged role as violent crime victims in news media reporting", and posited that missing white woman syndrome functions as a type of racial hierarchy in the cultural imagery of the US. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva categorized the racial component of missing white woman syndrome as a "form of racial grammar, through which white supremacy is normalized by implicit, or even invisible standards".

The phenomenon has led to a number of tough on crime measures, mainly on the political right, that were named for white women who disappeared and were subsequently found harmed. In addition to race and class, factors such as supposed attractiveness, body size, and youthfulness have been identified as unfair criteria in the determination of newsworthiness in coverage of missing women. News coverage of missing black women was more likely to focus on the victim's problems, such as abusive boyfriends, criminal history, or drug addiction, while coverage of white women often tended to focus on their roles as mothers, daughters, students, and contributors to their communities.

Origin of the phrase

American news anchor Gwen Ifill is credited with originating the phrase at the Unity: Journalists of Color journalism conference in 2004. At the conference, she said "I call it the missing white woman search syndrome. If there is a missing white woman you're going to cover that every day."

Studies, reports and analyses

United States

In 2003, the ''San Francisco Chronicle'' published an article detailing the disparity between the coverage of the Laci Peterson case, and that of Evelyn Hernandez, a Hispanic woman – both of whom disappeared in 2002.

A report that aired on CNN in 2006 noted the differences in the level of media coverage given to missing white women (such as Laci Peterson and Natalee Holloway), when compared to the level of coverage given to LaToyia Figueroa, a pregnant black Hispanic woman. Figueroa disappeared in Philadelphia in 2005, the same year Holloway disappeared.

A 2010 study of news coverage of missing children found that black missing children cases were significantly underrepresented, when compared to national statistics. Missing black girls were significantly underrepresented in national news reporting. The coverage of death cases for black boys was significantly greater than expected. Coverage of non-black female kidnapping cases was greater than expected. A subsequent study found that children from minority groups, especially black children, were more likely to remain missing for longer periods of time.

A 2013 study that addressed media coverage of missing children, focusing on gender, but not race, found that "the results revealed that gender and age play only a minor role in deciding which abduction incidents are covered by newspapers, as well as the extent to which they are reported on. Specifically, newspapers dedicated more words to female victims than male victims, and reported more on younger children (aged 11 and under) than older children (aged 12 and over) when they were the victim of a nonfamily abduction."

In 2015, a report was published that re-examined the results from Min and Feaster's 2010 study about media coverage of missing children and confirmed that the media coverage of white missing persons was disproportionate compared to non-whites; but found that the coverage of females was not as biased as the 2010 study concluded.

In 2016, Zach Sommers, a sociologist at Northwestern University, published a study explaining that while there is a sizable body of research that shows that white people are more likely than people of color to appear in news coverage as victims of violent crime, there is relatively little when it comes to missing persons cases. Sommers cross-referenced the missing persons coverage of four national and regional media outlets against the FBI's missing persons database and found that black people were disproportionately less likely to appear in the news when compared to their rates of missingness; he also found that among those missing persons who appeared in the news, the coverage was much more intense (i.e., more articles were written) for white women and girls than other demographic groups.

Professor Eduardo Bonilla-Silva theorised that the subtle standard of placing a premium on white lives in the news helps to maintain and reinforce a racial hierarchy with whites at the top. For example, black women are members of both a marginalized racial group and a marginalized gender group. Crucially, though, black women have an "intersectional experience hatis greater than the sum of racism and sexism". In other words, like white women, black women are subject to sexism, but the form of that sexism differs for black women because of the compounding effects of racial discrimination; with missing white woman syndrome being a pertinent manifestation of this social phenomenon. Some sociologists have argued that the tone of media coverage for black female victims differs markedly from coverage of white female victims in that the former are more likely to be blamed for purportedly putting themselves in harm's way, either knowingly or unknowingly. Victim blaming in this context reinforces the notion that black female victims are not only less innocent, but also less worthy of rescue relative to white women. Other observers note the lack of publicity given to black female victims of police brutality in news coverage, attributing the silence to a tradition of "sexism and patriarchy" in American society.

Kym Pasqualini, president of the National Center for Missing Adults, observed that media outlets tend to focus on "damsels in distress"—typically, affluent young white women and teenagers.

In a 2016 ''Esquire'' article about the disappearance of Tiffany Whitton, journalist Tom Junod observed that white women of lower social status, such as Whitton, a 26-year-old unemployed drug addict who was on parole, do not get much media attention, as "media outlets are ruthlessly selective, and they tend to prefer women who are white, pretty, and, above all, innocent." Whitton's mother stated that producers of shows like ''Nancy Grace'' told her they weren't interested in her daughter's case. Dr. Cory L. Armstrong wrote in ''The Washington Post'', "the pattern of choosing only young, white, middle-class women for the full damsel treatment says a lot about a nation that likes to believe it has consigned race and class to irrelevance."

In 2017, a research paper from the University of South Florida studied media coverage and found that " ... disparities in coverage were seen based on race and age. In addition, the narratives of the reports were framed as cautionary tales, and victims were seen as active participants in their disappearance."

In 2019, two criminologists, Danielle C. Slakoff from California State University, Sacramento and Henry F. Fradella from Arizona State University, published an open-access research article about the Missing White Woman Syndrome. They examined 4 years' worth of coverage in 11 different U.S. newspapers. Slakoff and Fradella found that White missing women and girls received more initial and repeated coverage than missing black women.

The Wyoming Urban Indian Health Institute published a study in 2020, by professor Emily A. Grant, which found that 710 Indigenous people were reported missing in the state of Wyoming between 2011 and 2020, and assessed the media coverage, and concluded that media coverage of Indigenous and people of color was significantly less than coverage of missing white people.

Canada

According to a 2008 study published in ''The Law and Society Association'', aboriginal women who go missing in Canada receive 27 times less news coverage than white women; they also receive "dispassionate and less-detailed, headlines, articles, and images".

United Kingdom

In January 2006, the London Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Ian Blair, accused the media of ‘institutional racism’ in its reporting of murders. He contrasted the reporting of the death of the male white lawyer Tom ap Rhys Price with the murder of the male Asian builders' merchant Balbir Matharu. He said ‘murders in minority communities do not seem to interest the mainstream media’. He said that the death of Damilola Taylor, a 10-year-old black boy, was clearly an exception to this. He said he had been surprised at how much coverage the murders of two 10-year-old white girls in Soham had received.

University of Leicester Criminology Professor Yvonne Jewkes cites the murder of Milly Dowler, the murder of Sarah Payne, and the Soham murders as examples of "eminently newsworthy stories" about girls from "respectable" middle-class families and backgrounds whose parents used the news media effectively. She writes that, in contrast, the killing of Damilola Taylor, a 10-year-old boy from Nigeria, initially received little news coverage, with reports initially concentrating upon street crime levels and community policing in London, and largely ignoring the victim. Even when Damilola's father flew into the UK from Nigeria to make press statements and television appearances, the level of public outcry did not, Jewkes asserts, reach "the near hysterical outpourings of anger and sadness that accompanied the deaths of Sarah, Milly, Holly, and Jessica". However, according to the BBC
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