By Grace Woodruff, Valerie Tseng, Hannah Anderson
On September 11, 2021, 22-year-old travel vlogger Gabby Petito was reported missing by her family following a months-long cross-country road trip, which ended with Petito’s partner Brian Laundrie returning home to Florida without her. Petito’s case was highly publicized, with nightly news shows and Twitter threads alike reporting on every detail of her disappearance. Ten days later, Petito’s body was identified in Bridger-Teton National Forest, and the media attention on her case was highly credited for the discovery.
Petito’s story is a prime example of Missing White Woman Syndrome, or MWWS as it is often abbreviated. MWWS describes a phenomenon where missing white women receive far more media coverage and public attention than missing women of color. During the first week of Petito’s disappearance, Petito’s name was mentioned nearly 400 times each on both Fox News and CNN, and 100 times on MSNBC. In contrast, most disappeared brown, Black, or Indigenous young women are rarely discussed to the same extent, particularly by nationwide news sources. Data from Wyoming’s Task Force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons concludes that white women are far more likely to have an article written about them while missing, and Indigenous people are more likely to be written about after a body has been discovered (Washington Post).
Simply put, non-white women who go missing are much less likely to have their stories picked up by news outlets.
Black Americans represent a disproportionate number of open missing persons cases. While 98% of missing children are found within days, cases of missing Black children are much more likely to go unsolved. In 2016, cases of missing Black persons appeared amongst the remaining older open cases four times as often as the cases of White and Hispanic missing persons (William & Mary Study). This issue is further exacerbated by the fact that women of color are significantly more likely to go missing in the first place. Black women make up fewer than seven percent of the American population, but represent nearly 10 percent of missing people in the United States. In 2020, the number of Black women and girls who were counted as missing was nearly 100,000 (NPR). Excuses abound when a person of color goes missing—perhaps they were involved in criminal activity, maybe they ran away intentionally—and these explanations shift blame to the missing persons themselves and away from the perpetrators of violence. Consider the case of the 11 Black women who were murdered by Anthony Sowell. When the families of the women went to the authorities to report their loved ones missing, they were told that the women were probably on drugs or had run away, according to Natalie Wilson, the president of the Black and Missing Foundation (Patriot Ledger). Not only are missing women of color underrepresented in the media, their cases are more likely to go unreported in the first place (National Green Party Women’s Caucus).
Indigenous communities are also impacted negatively by Missing White Woman Syndrome. Unreliable and inaccurate official government statistics impede the ability for Indigenous communities to garner public resources and media attention for cases of missing Indigenous women: In 2016, of the 5,217 Indigenous women and girls who were reported missing, only 116 cases were logged by the Department of Justice (Native Hope). That’s about two percent. Two percent of Indigenous women and girls who were reported missing had their cases logged into the Department of Justice’s federal missing person’s database.
When asked, police departments and government agencies deny that race changes how they approach missing persons cases, yet the disparity in the number of white missing persons who are found compared to missing POC who are found persists. Because solving missing persons cases often relies heavily on publicization of the person’s face and information offered by members of the public, media coverage plays a critically important role. In a study that found strong evidence that cases of Black missing children were reported on in the news significantly less often than those of white missing children, the authors suggest that possible causes for this stark and sobering finding are that newsrooms may lack cultural and racial diversity, could be motivated by commercial considerations to cater their reporting to a white audience, and/or could be impacted by the racial makeup of the ownership and management (Min & Feaster). In these explanations, the news media both reflects and perpetrates racism and white supremacy: media outlets tailor their content to a white audience that has perhaps internalized the belief that white victims, especially women, are inherently more likely to be victims and therefore more worthy of being ‘saved.’ Media organizations often continue a long history of depicting POC as the perpetrators of crime who are in need of increased policing and punishment rather than as potential victims of crime, worthy of just as much empathy and help as white people.
Gabby Petito’s disappearance and death was a tragedy, but the media response to her case is part of a larger pattern in which a victim’s race dictates both the magnitude and nature of the coverage received. News outlets know that a young, attractive, white woman shown as a “damsel in distress” draws a large response. At the intersection of these identities, Gabby Petito’s disappearance has made the perfect news story. All the while, missing women of color are systematically ignored or blamed for their own victimization. This is evidenced when one looks at the statistics for missing Black and Indigenous women. All of this discussion begs the question, what can be done? The problem is deeply rooted in structural inequalities faced by women of color. It is daunting and has no simple solution. In this age of social media, however, it is more possible for the public to direct media and news sources. For example, activists used the hashtag that was trending for Petito to raise awareness for cases involving missing people of color that were not receiving adequate attention. Using social media like Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram can be a powerful way for individuals and groups that do not have control over major networks or newspapers to publicize cases of missing POC. Raising public awareness is key to telling the stories—and bringing closure to the cases—of missing persons of color.
Image credit: Obert Madondo, “Forgotten Sisters,” https://www.flickr.com/photos/12973569@N04/48078939016/