MWWS refers to the tendency of the media to focus heavily on missing or abducted people when they are attractive, young, well-off, white females (e.g., Natalee Holloway, Laci Peterson), and to not provide much, if any, coverage of others who go missing (making it pointless for me to put sample names here: you wouldn’t have heard of them).
Or to break it down in comedian Jon Stewart’s terms (2004, p. 155), MWWS is defined by the following equation:
y = Family Income x (Abductee Cuteness ÷ Skin Color)2 + Length of Abduction x Media Savvy of Grieving Parents3
(where y = minutes of coverage)
As usual, Stewart’s remark is funny…except it’s not. In fact, nothing is funny about the recent disappearance of UMSL student Phoenix Coldon.
Phoenix was last seen by her parents sitting in her SUV in their driveway talking on her phone. When she left, they thought she had gone out for a quick errand, but she never came back. The Coldons had a hard time getting the police to devote attention and resources to the case. Some of that is not the police’s fault: she was legally an adult, and at the time, she hadn’t been missing more than 24 hours.
But even after days and weeks had passed with no sign of their daughter, Phoenix’s parents still struggled to get the attention of the media. Here at UMSL, where Phoenix Coldon should be a household name, I think the lack of publicity has more to do with a poorly-read school newspaper and not much other campus-wide mass communication than it does with MWWS. Don’t get me wrong, I believe the lack of publicity is a travesty — if UMSL can get out the vote to the tune of 1,500 students over a proposed rec center, one article in The Current nearly 3 months after Phoenix’s disappearance is not a good enough effort to keep this story in the public’s eye — I just don’t think it’s due to MWWS.
When it comes to the fairly minimal amount of coverage in the St Louis and the national media, however, I am more inclined to view MWWS as an explanation. Media outlets must always prioritize some stories over others due to time and space constraints, and I wonder why it is that Phoenix’s story hasn’t garnered more attention. From the pictures I have seen, Phoenix is a beautiful young woman. According to Jon Stewart’s formula, that leaves her parents’ relative lack of resources and connections, and the family’s skin color, to ‘blame.’ To the extent that this is accurate, what a horrible, horrible reality for a family to have to contend with, on top of the crisis they already face: that they might be able to get more support and help in locating their daughter if they were richer, whiter, and knew more “important” people.
I don’t know the Coldons and I want to be clear what I am suggesting is based on assumptions that may not be accurate. I do know that they have set up a PayPal fund to raise money to hire a private investigator, and that they have struggled to get the media’s ear. I also know that as a parent in this situation, I would want to do every single thing in my power to find my child, and I would be tormented to think I might not have everything “in my power,” through no fault of my own. Let’s face it, the media could be crucial in breaking a case like this, and the Coldons have not yet gotten the type of media coverage certain other abductions — many, of the MWW variety — have.
This is a very strong indictment of the media I am proposing, and I want to make two important caveats to it. First, this is by no means only a story about the media letting the Coldon family down. Phoenix’s car was found running with the keys in the ignition in East St Louis just three hours after her parents last saw her. The car was impounded, but for some reason, St Louis police did not learn this fact until two weeks later, when a family friend of the Coldons, doing his own sleuthing, called it to their attention. How could this happen? Well, in a recent news story about a shooting in East St. Louis, it was reported that only two police officers were on duty at the time of the crime. I’m not sure how big East St. Louis is, but I’m sure it’s big enough to need more than two officers on patrol. No wonder they lack the resources to keep up with paperwork and record-keeping. Budget cuts and politics are one thing on paper, but they take on a new ugliness when you realize they may have given someone who would have had a three-hour head-start on the police a two-week head-start! What an ugly product of our city and country’s messes! How do the Coldons make peace with this reality? The media may be somewhat to blame, but so are a host of other serious societal problems.
Second, it’s only fair to remember that the media are also part of the solution. Phoenix’s parents have a Facebook page with nearly 2000 members, a free way to disseminate information nation- and world-wide. Some national media outlets did cover the story, in large part due to a potential connection to another disappearance of a woman in Atlanta. In a textual analysis of media self-critique, communication scholar Carole Liebler found that in addition to potentially perpetuating MWWS, the media, particularly newspapers, also reported on it, in effect critiquing themselves. By drawing attention to the issue, they also shine a light on harsh realities in both news production and our world at large that, at times, cruelly make it seem like some people’s lives are more important than others.
References
Liebler, C.M. (2010). Me(di)a culpa? The “Missing White Woman Syndrome” and media self-critique. Communication, Culture, and Critique, 3(4), 549-565.
Stewart, J. (2004). America (the book): A citizen’s guide to democracy inaction with a foreword by Thomas Jefferson. New York: Warner Books.
