Friday, August 05, 2005

Dateline tonight

One of my biggest media gripes, as of late, has been the over-exaggerated coverage missing white woman/teens get. Lacie Peterson, Natalee Holloway, "the Runaway Bride" and all the other missing persons stories that clutter column inches and literally hours of cable news coverage are not national news stories. They are tragedies. They truly are tragedies and I have the greatest sympathies for any of the families involved in these stories. But people disappear all the time. Yeah it sucks, but its not national news.

With that said, "Dateline" on NBC tonight is airing a special report looking at the news coverage of white women who disappear in comparison to how stories of missing minorities get covered by the national media. Who knows if NBC will do this story well or if it will just be fluff, but I think it is a good first step. Next the national media will need to realize they can't cover every little kidnapping/disappearance, so they shouldn't cover any of them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you get a chance to watch the Dateline special? How was it? I'm interested to hear more.

Nick Geidner said...

No, I unfortunately I was not home and forgot to tape it. But they did put up a full story on MSNBC.com...OK now I have read the article that I just pointed to and I can only conclude that there was fluff and was crap. I mean it looks like they had some interesting statistics, but it doesn't conquer they why or the how at all. And the interview with Neal Shapiro, NBC News president, seems like a complete joke.