MSNBC host Joy Reid believes the intense media coverage of the Gabby Petito case derives from something called “missing white woman syndrome.”
Reid made the comments on The Reid Out Monday, citing other cases that get less attention but admitting that Petito’s family deserves answers.
“It goes without saying that no family should ever have to endure that kind of pain,” Reid said.
The term “missing white woman syndrome” was coined by the late Gwen Iffil who used it to illustrate the public’s fascination with missing White women like Laci Peterson or Natalee Holloway.
“But the way this story has captivated the nation has many wonders, why not the same media attention when people of color go missing?” she said.
Reid spent much of the segment discussing missing Black and Native American individuals she claimed to have never heard about in the same way as the Petito case.
Instead of going on air trying to make this horrific death and it’s media coverage into some kind of ‘bias race issue’ as Reid is clearly trying to do. She should go to the MSNBC producers of her show and say that when this kind of situation happens involving a woman of color or different ethnic background we will cover it at the same level as the rest of media spends covering the ‘missing white woman’.
You see it is not a ‘syndrome’ as Reid tries to spin it. It is a simple case of the producers of all news shows who decide ‘what gets covered and how much time’.
Perhaps if Reid truly understood broadcast tv journalism then she would know how tv coverage is decided.