Public Eye
November 28, 2005 9:24 AM

Media Found Missing In Action

By
Vaughn Ververs
Topics
Media Issues
Confirming what many critics have noted over the past several years, a recent study by the Scripps-Howard News Service shows that, when it comes to covering missing children, those who are "white, cute, wealthy and under 12" get more attention.
"Experts agree that whites account for only half of the nation's missing children. But white children were the subjects of more than two-thirds of the dispatches appearing on the Associated Press' national wire during the last five years and for three-quarters of missing-children coverage on CNN, according to a first-of-its-kind study by Scripps Howard News Service."
The study examined 162 missing children stories reported by the Associated Press and 43 reported by CNN over the past 4 years. Here's what it found:
"White children accounted for 67 percent of AP's missing-children coverage and for 76 percent of CNN's. But they represented only 53 percent of the 37,665 cases reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children during the same period and only 54 percent of the cases found in a 2002 study of missing children sponsored by the U.S. Justice Department."


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