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Daily Social Issues
Above: Caylee Anthony, missing since Summer 2008; On the left, Keinya Carrol, missing since July 21, 2007; On the right: Bianca Elaine Lebron, missing since November 7, 2001.
August 12, 2008
Who's Missing Child is More Important ? A Caylee Anthony Question.
Is there an unspoken human hierarchy of missing children in this country? Do certain children matter more than others? When children in our country go missing, how do we decide, as a culture, who's child gets the focus of the media's attention? Certainly there is no doubt that media attention can be helpful to missing children cases if time is of the essence in finding a missing child. The far-reaching repetitive power of 24 hour news channels are like a global APB and can easily be used to proliferate information and put pressure on witnesses, bystanders, bloggers, vigilantes, concerned citizens, suspects and the authorities. Suddenly, with CNN coverage, the world is watching. There is no doubt that the power of the mass media could mean life or death for an endangered missing child.
Recently, there was DNA information made public on CNN that Jon Benet Ramsey's parents were fully exonerated from being suspects in their child's death. This is a nearly ten year-old case. While
not a missing child case per se, it was a perverted and horribly tragic whodunnit about a Lolita-ish blonde toddler that received nonstop media hype over the course of a decade. And, just this past February, CNN widely publicized the re-opening of the Natalee Holloway case, the pretty blonde teenage girl who went missing in Aruba in 2005 during a school-sanctioned Spring Break vacation. In fact, if you input the words "missing" and "Aruba" into the Google search engine, you will pull up "Natalee Holloway". Incredible. Try it.
Now, there is this new case about the missing child, Caylee Anthony. Little Caylee is an adorable, two-year old brunette, with big brown eyes and a very vulnerable demeanor. Her full name is Caylee Marie Anthony and police dug up her grandmother’s backyard after learning from a neighbor that Caylee’s mother had borrowed a shovel the night of July 9th, but found nothing. Her mother evidently waited 30 days or so to report her missing. Mega talk show host Larry King and his producers have spent hours questioning the grandmother in the case on national television, while Caylee's mother remains behind bars as a suspect in the child's disappearance. Caylee's family members are pointing to a mysterious "babysitter" who is said to have run off with the child. Authorities are looking for this mystery woman.
In 2006, the FBI, for the first time complied with a 1990 act of Congress by issuing a public accounting of 662,196 lost, runaway and kidnapped children reported by police to state and federal authorities for the previous year. Fifty-eight percent of missing children reported to federal authorities in 2005 were girls, according to the FBI report, and 33 percent were black children - a disproportionately high percentage that surprised advocates for missing children. The statistics prove out a dramatic over representation of black girls go missing each year.
Why is it that the media almost never focuses on any black or Hispanic female children when they go missing. Is it ratings? Is it public disinterest? Why must there be some overarching ratings play in these massive media blitzes about missing children? Surely, the television media cannot be that callous in its coverage. News Directors must be doing some thinking, right? They must have some compassion for the pain of all families when a child goes missing, right? The netherworld of missing children is one of the darkest, hardest and most vile places for our minds to dwell. Can't the media do better here in its even-handedness of focus on this topic?
