Missing white woman syndrome

Missing white woman syndrome is a term used to describe an apparent media bias prevalent in the United States and other multiracial Western countries, in which news agencies and broadcasters assign disproportionately high levels of coverage to disappearances involving white female victims. Black broadcast journalist Gwen Ifill is credited with coining the term during a 2004 journalism conference.

Conventional instances of missing white woman syndrome typically involve younger Caucasian female victims whose appearances align with conventional notions of physical attractiveness. Researchers have documented the unbalanced levels of attention such cases tend to receive from both police and the US corporate media complex. A 2016 study found that the victim’s race and gender played major roles in determining whether their disappearance receives any news coverage at all, as well as how much coverage the case receives. Critics of missing white woman syndrome find fault with the relative lack of similar coverage for missing people belonging to racial minority groups.

Background

At any given time, tens of thousands of people are classified by US law enforcement agencies as missing. The categorization describes any individual whose current whereabouts are not known and cannot be ascertained. According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), which is operated by the US Department of Justice (DOJ), approximately six hundred thousand individuals go missing in the United States each year. A large majority of those individuals are quickly located and determined to be alive and well. However, a small minority are not promptly found. In such cases, and especially in cases in which the subject’s disappearance is known or believed to be linked to a crime, law enforcement agencies may leverage media publicity as a tool for eliciting tips and information that could help them locate the subject of their search.

However, given the sheer volume of such cases and the practical limits on the number of cases that could be given news coverage, it is not possible to publicize every missing person’s disappearance in the media. Yet, media analysts have long noted that white girls and women are much more likely to receive such coverage than members of other gender and racial demographics. This is particularly true of women toward the younger end of the age range, and of women whose physical appearance conforms to commonly held beauty standards.

During a 2004 panel discussion, prominent television news anchor Suzanne Malveaux criticized the US media complex for its extensive 1994 coverage of the ongoing scandal involving Olympic figure skaters Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding while effectively ignoring international genocides in Kosovo and Rwanda. Ifill interjected, noting that television news executives seem most keen to cover stories involving missing white women, calling the phenomenon “missing white woman syndrome.” Audience members met Ifill’s observation with a resounding cheer, and the exchange is now cited as the moment at which missing white woman syndrome first entered the public lexicon as a descriptive term.

Overview

Ifill’s 2004 remarks touched off a succession of widely publicized and similar observations that brought missing white woman syndrome into sharp focus among both media analysts and the public. In 2005, popular comedian and media critic Jon Stewart issued a satirical mathematical formula for determining the amount of coverage a television network would assign to a given missing persons case, with high income, physical attractiveness, and white skin all factoring heavily into his sarcastic equation. Prominent Black journalist Eugene Robinson weighed in with a widely discussed 2006 editorial published in the Washington Post, which excoriated the media practice of assigning sensationalized coverage to missing cases involving attractive white women. According to Robinson’s analysis, the classic case of missing white woman syndrome begins with a disappearance or the discovery of human remains, which functions as the entry point to a strange or lurid mystery involving shadowy conspirators, enigmatic suspects, corrupt powerbrokers, or deceitful loved ones. Robinson wrote that the single unifying element in such melodrama is that the attractive missing woman at the heart of the mystery is always white.

Missing white woman syndrome has drawn scrutiny and criticism for multiple reasons. Observers note that missing persons whose disappearances receive intense and widespread media attention stand a significantly higher chance of having their case resolved. Thus, critics of missing white woman syndrome often state that the practice implicitly attaches higher value to young, attractive white girls and women than it does to missing people of other genders, races, and age groups. On a deeper level, missing white woman syndrome is also said to reinforce a culturally ingrained system that has historically tended to place white people at the top of multiracial hierarchies. According to adherents of this viewpoint, the media message essentially is that missing white women and the suffering of their white families matter, while the same suffering experienced by members of other racial and demographic groups does not. Furthermore, the high media profile achieved by such cases often intensifies law enforcement’s efforts to locate the victim, which functionally equates to the disproportionate availability and expenditure of public resources for missing white women to the detriment of other victims.

Though the term “missing white woman syndrome” was first coined in 2004, the concept’s presence in the media’s treatment of high-profile missing persons cases extends back much farther. During the twentieth century, national US news coverage involving missing persons focused almost exclusively on white victims while also skewing heavily away from missing males toward missing females. Some observers have argued that the sensationalized coverage of the murder of Colorado child beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey marked a pivotal moment in the development of the modern missing white woman syndrome phenomenon. The Ramsey case generated massive television ratings, providing broadcasters with a strong incentive to seek out stories capable of being molded into similar narratives in a bid to drive increases in viewership and profitability.

Topic Today

Ifill’s now-famous description of missing white woman syndrome fits multiple high-profile disappearances that have received extensive coverage in the U. media during the twenty-first century. Major examples include Laci Peterson, who was last seen on a Christmas Eve while she was eight months pregnant and was later determined to have been murdered by her husband; Natalee Holloway, a high school student who vanished during a graduation trip to Aruba and was declared legally dead in 2012; and Gabby Petito, a well-known social media influencer believed to have been murdered by her boyfriend, whose remains were located approximately one month after Petito’s body was discovered in September 2021 after an extensive search.

Petito’s case in particular revived both the scholarly and public conversations surrounding missing white woman syndrome. In its aftermath, multiple major US news organizations and media agencies published opinion and analysis pieces reflecting on the disproportionate coverage that Petito received at the expense of other missing persons who disappeared until similarly troubling circumstances around the same time. A 2021 analysis published by The Guardian noted stark racial disparities in missing persons statistics. Black people constitute 13 percent of the US population but account for 31 percent of its missing people, while white-identifying people make up 76 percent of the US population but only 54 percent of its missing persons cases. Many observers latched onto the media’s self-referential criticisms, noting that news organizations retain editorial control over their own content and have the ability and resources to publicize missing persons cases involving victims of color, yet make the conscious decision not to do so.

These exact criticisms proved fruitful for commentators seeking deeper insights into the root sources and causes of the missing white woman syndrome media phenomenon. Analysts have noted that missing white woman syndrome is heavily driven by commercial factors. One of the trend’s main drivers is a strong public appetite for news stories that match the archetype. Some researchers have forwarded data suggesting that white female viewers rank among the leading consumers of media stories that match the missing white woman syndrome profile, creating dynamics that prompt the media to continue prioritizing such cases because they result in higher viewership among coveted audience demographic groups.

Yet, other experts believe that missing white woman syndrome is better explained by pervasive patterns of racial and misogynistic bias among law enforcement. Commenting in the media in the aftermath of the Gabby Petito case in 2021, Syracuse University researcher Carol Liebler said that in her work, she has found that it is primarily police officials and not media executives or journalists who determine which missing persons cases go on to receive media attention. In Liebler’s view, the overrepresentation of white women in such media coverage reveal their accompanying prioritization by law enforcement at the expense of racialized victims. Liebler also echoes the views of other expert commentators in opining that missing white woman syndrome ultimately reveals dominant cultural ideals regarding race and beauty. In response, some media companies have launched purpose-built programming designed to raise awareness of missing persons cases involving nonwhite victims. For example, in 2021 HBO launched Black and Missing, a four-part documentary miniseries about unsolved cases involving missing Black persons, to widespread critical acclaim.

Bibliography

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Deggans, Eric. “HBO’s Black and Missing Offers an Antidote to Missing White Woman Syndrome.” National Public Radio, 24 Nov. 2021, www.npr.org/2021/11/24/1058765492/hbos-black-and-missing-offers-an-antidote-to-missing-white-woman-syndrome. Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.

Moss, Jada L. “The Forgotten Victims of Missing White Woman Syndrome: An Examination of Legal Measures that Contribute to the Lack of Search and Recovery of Missing Black Girls and Women.” William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice, vol. 25, no. 3, 2018–2019, pp. 737–762.

Pearce, Matt. “Gabby Petito and One Way to Break Media’s ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome.’” Los Angeles Times, 4 Oct. 2021, www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2021-10-04/gabby-petito-and-breaking-the-white-missing-women-syndrome. Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.

Purnell, Derecka. “The ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome’ Still Plagues America.” The Guardian, 29 Sep. 2021, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/29/the-missing-white-woman-syndrome-still-plagues-america. Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.

Robertson, Katie. “News Media Can’t Shake ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome,’ Critics Say.” The New York Times, 22 Sept. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/09/22/business/media/gabby-petito-missing-white-woman-syndrome.html. Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.

Rosner, Helen. “The Long American History of ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome.’” The New Yorker, 8 Oct. 2021, www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/the-long-american-history-of-missing-white-woman-syndrome. Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.

Sommers, Zach. “Missing White Woman Syndrome: An Empirical Analysis of Race and Gender Disparities in Online News Coverage of Missing Persons.” Journal of Criminal Law & Criminality, vol. 106, no. 2, 2016, pp. 275–314.