Missing White Woman Syndrome

Media coverage of he Gabby Petito case has resulted in a focus on missing white woman syndrome, which Wikipedia characterizes as

the observed disproportionate media coverage, especially in television, of missing-person cases involving young, white, upper-middle-class women or girls compared to the relative lack of attention towards missing women who are not white, women of lower social classes, and missing men or boys.

The entry then cites what are essentially critical race theory explanations for the phenomenon:

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 West. 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".

But let's differentiate betweern two separate media, TV news programs and the true crime genre, either in print or on cable TV. (True crime cable TV shows are often based on books by specialized true crime writers like the late Ann Rule.) The accusation that TV news focuses on missing cute white women is probably true, but I don't think you can say this says something about the culture as a whole.

For starters, what appears on TV news is determined by TV news editors, who are themselves largely upper middle class white people. They're working from "instant" events that cross their screens, and the stories they decide are important are driven by a herd mentality common in the press. Gabby Petito will be important until the story fades and there's a hurricane or something else to replace it.

However, this type of TV network news has steadily been losing its audience. I don't think it's out of line to suggest that upper middle class white news editors are increasingly out of touch with the plebs, who simply aren't buyng the old formula as much. This says good things about the plebs, as far as I can see, while those critiquing news coverage via CRT are speaking from their own limited academic bourgeois perspective.

But let's look at the true crime genre of books and cable TV series and specials. These are out of the "news" category, since they often cover subjects like serial killers Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer, whose cases are now 40 and 50 years in the past. Beyond that, Gacy's and Dahmer's victims were males, which doesn't fit the missing white women characterization.

In fact, Ted Bundy is in many ways unique among the well-known killers in that he did single out attractive, young, middle-class white women, while others, like Gary Ridgway, the Green River killer, singled out street prostitutes of various racial backgrounds, in fact they were Lumpenproletariat. To true crime fans -- I think I can speak as one -- all such cases are of equal interest.

And as a true crime fan who doesn't follow TV news, I was pretty much impervious to the Gabby Petito story until early this week when the missing white woman theory caught my attention. But this is a phenomenon of TV news that says more about TV news than its shrinking audience.

This is not to say that there aren't poorly produced true crime shows, which are in fact often about missing white women. In fact, there's a "missing" subgenre on cable that covers cases that remain unsolved, often white women, with extensive weepy interviews with the victims' mothers and sisters. But these come more from Oprah Winfrey and seem to appeal to people who like to watch other people cry on TV. Nor are they particularly upper middle class; the mothers and sisters have tattoos and show deep cleavage.

But in addition, the actual detectives who are interviewed on the better true crime shows sometimes make the point that truly innocent victims are rare in the real world. The "missing single mom" often turns out to have three kids from two baby daddies and went missing because, after all, she was entitled to go bar hopping on Saturday nights, and what's going to be done with the three kids turns out to be problematic, because the dads sure don't want them.

I avoid shows like that.