OK, this is not PC, but when Black or Hispanic girls are abducted, does anyone care?

[Anonymous]

Actually, if a white child is from the lower end of society, it still makes endless cable news. I'm thinking of a girl abducted from her trailer a few years ago in Florida; a girl also abducted from a trailer in California a few years ago while her parents were having some sort of pot/swinging party in the next room ... unsure about the socio-economic class of the 2 girls murdered on a rural road in Oklahoma last month, but ....

[Anonymous]

Remember the tsunami? All the close ups of the European tourists?
Loo,k I think that the pp with the connections to the media made a point. We need to start seeing children of other races as our own children. I do. All children remind me of my own.

[Anonymous]

This may be an off-the-wall idea, but here goes:

I have noticed that so much of the news today uses scare tactics to try to get us to watch. So much of it is completely ridiculous, but apparently effective if they keep doing it. If they are reporting someone missing, it needs to have a "that could happen to me" feel for it to have the ratings-grabbing effect.

This is going on the assumption that their ratings report the audience as primarily white.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Remember the tsunami? All the close ups of the European tourists?
Loo,k I think that the pp with the connections to the media made a point. We need to start seeing children of other races as our own children. I do. All children remind me of my own.

For me I notice the children by age relative to the age of my DD. If I hear about missing child who is a toddler, that would affect me more than if the child were 15.

[Anonymous]

I'll never forget a television reporter who was among the Kurds in Northern Iraq many years ago reporting on their struggles. She interviewed two rather European looking children and said something about how awful this was and look at these kids, they could be kids down the street.

Torn between appreciating her attempt to bring this home to viewers and the distressing realization that she would not likely say that about children starving in Sudan, for example.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This may be an off-the-wall idea, but here goes:

I have noticed that so much of the news today uses scare tactics to try to get us to watch. So much of it is completely ridiculous, but apparently effective if they keep doing it. If they are reporting someone missing, it needs to have a "that could happen to me" feel for it to have the ratings-grabbing effect.

This is going on the assumption that their ratings report the audience as primarily white.

But why can't whites see black children as their own?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'll never forget a television reporter who was among the Kurds in Northern Iraq many years ago reporting on their struggles. She interviewed two rather European looking children and said something about how awful this was and look at these kids, they could be kids down the street.

Torn between appreciating her attempt to bring this home to viewers and the distressing realization that she would not likely say that about children starving in Sudan, for example.

This is similar to the empathetic stories that they presented during the Bosnian War. Because the victims of the war were all white, they really did represent the majority in the US.

Along the same lines, I mostly see camera shots or interviews with white veterans and rarely see any exposure of current military or veterans of color. I think these subconsciously affect the way people view people of color, from an empathetic viewpoint for civilians or patrioticism from military service.

Anybody worked in a newsroom? Last time I worked in one, it was 99% white.

[Anonymous]

Its simple-ratings.

If they run a story about a black girl gone missing and it gets low ratings, then they won't run as many. If they get high ratings on a white girl, then they continue to run stories on white girls.

There's no conspiracy, its all about money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'll never forget a television reporter who was among the Kurds in Northern Iraq many years ago reporting on their struggles. She interviewed two rather European looking children and said something about how awful this was and look at these kids, they could be kids down the street.
Torn between appreciating her attempt to bring this home to viewers and the distressing realization that she would not likely say that about children starving in Sudan, for example.

This is similar to the empathetic stories that they presented during the Bosnian War. Because the victims of the war were all white, they really did represent the majority in the US.

You know what, I think it was Bosnian kids she was reporting on, not Kurdish kids. Sorry! Regardless, point still holds.

[Anonymous]

Some whites do relate to black children as their own. A white woman I knew lost her son when he was a teen. That son and my brother were best of friends, though different races. When she later met my brother when he was in his 40's she grabbed him and said that she felt that her son had come back home.