(continued from above)
Just north of where I now live, a young black girl named Asha Degree disappeared a year or so ago. Gone. Off the face of a North Carolina map. Walked to the store and never came home. She wasn't a runaway. Someone took her. And if you didn't hear about it where you live, don't be surprised. It was hard to hear anything about it down here either. The state line often acts a nice buffer for news that Upstate South Carolinians don't really care about. There were volunteers that looked for her. No one found her. And people in Salt Lake City don't care.
As a newsguy, I can't suggest the national media cover every disappearance or kidnapping. It's impossible. There aren't enough milk cartons--let alone news minutes--to take on the task of helping America find its kids. And I can't say that the national media should give up on trying to cover these things all together. However, I bet you could make a case that there is racial and regional bias when it comes to which of these stories get covered and which do not.
Just chew on these few facts for a second:
*Asha Degree barely scored 12 minutes of news time since she disappeared. Elizabeth Smart gets about that much a night. Asha is black and lives in the impoverished South. Elizabeth is white and lives in a well-to-do neighborhood in Salt Lake City.
*Boston priest gets in trouble, national news. Charleston/Aiken South Carolina priest ADMITS to molesting a kid, doesn't cross the state media borders.
*A Greenwood, South Carolina youth minister is charged with dozens of counts of molesting little boys and video taping it. Dozens of little boys. Guess how many people outside of South Carolina heard about that one?
*Someone kidnapped a black girl in a large northern city around the same time Smart disappeared. Heard about that one yet?
When I was growing up, there was a much greater chance of seeing a rusted pickup truck in my neighborhood's driveway than a Mercedes. We lived in Hillbilly Heaven, not a mountain getaway.
If someone had kidnapped me, my friend, or his little brother that afternoon...I wonder if the networks would've sent Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather?
Just north of where I now live, a young black girl named Asha Degree disappeared a year or so ago. Gone. Off the face of a North Carolina map. Walked to the store and never came home. She wasn't a runaway. Someone took her. And if you didn't hear about it where you live, don't be surprised. It was hard to hear anything about it down here either. The state line often acts a nice buffer for news that Upstate South Carolinians don't really care about. There were volunteers that looked for her. No one found her. And people in Salt Lake City don't care.
As a newsguy, I can't suggest the national media cover every disappearance or kidnapping. It's impossible. There aren't enough milk cartons--let alone news minutes--to take on the task of helping America find its kids. And I can't say that the national media should give up on trying to cover these things all together. However, I bet you could make a case that there is racial and regional bias when it comes to which of these stories get covered and which do not.
Just chew on these few facts for a second:
*Asha Degree barely scored 12 minutes of news time since she disappeared. Elizabeth Smart gets about that much a night. Asha is black and lives in the impoverished South. Elizabeth is white and lives in a well-to-do neighborhood in Salt Lake City.
*Boston priest gets in trouble, national news. Charleston/Aiken South Carolina priest ADMITS to molesting a kid, doesn't cross the state media borders.
*A Greenwood, South Carolina youth minister is charged with dozens of counts of molesting little boys and video taping it. Dozens of little boys. Guess how many people outside of South Carolina heard about that one?
*Someone kidnapped a black girl in a large northern city around the same time Smart disappeared. Heard about that one yet?
When I was growing up, there was a much greater chance of seeing a rusted pickup truck in my neighborhood's driveway than a Mercedes. We lived in Hillbilly Heaven, not a mountain getaway.
If someone had kidnapped me, my friend, or his little brother that afternoon...I wonder if the networks would've sent Tom Brokaw or Dan Rather?
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