I’ve been tempted to write the IDS regarding Ayesha Awan’s columns before, but the March 2 column “The less important” really required some alternative analysis, particularly on its understanding of American media. It seems to me that Ms. Awan, as well as much of the United States, does not quite understand what the media is. The media is not an impartial judge that reports on items for their merit alone. Quite the contrary. The media is a business. They report on what will make them the most money. What will make people watch their programs over anybody else’s.
She cites cases like Laci Peterson, Natalee Holloway and Chandra Levy, saying that the reason they received news coverage is because they are “white pretty princesses.” She conveniently ignores the media blitz that occurred around Erica Pratt in 2002, a 7-year-old African-American girl who chewed her way to freedom before anybody even knew she was gone. She also ignores the recent media frenzy over William Ownby and Shawn Hornbeck. That’s three examples against her hypothesis without even using the Internet.
Coming back to the point, she fundamentally misunderstands why it is that the media reports certain cases. In the case of Levy, it was because a young intern on Capitol Hill disappeared, who happened to be having an affair with a congressman. That’s news regardless of sex, color or creed. Peterson – a young woman, 7 months pregnant, goes missing on Christmas? From suburbia, and her husband was cheating?
That’s news. A girl goes missing in a popular spring break spot? For most parents in the world, that’s important news. But sadly, women and children going missing from a crime-riddled area is not news. It’s what happens in crime-riddled areas. It has nothing to do with the relative value of human life, nothing to do with newsworthiness. It all has to do with money. The media stands to make far more money off a nine-month drama ensuing from the Scott Peterson case than a two-day spectacle about a woman killed in Gary, Ind., that leads nowhere. And that difference, ladies and gentleman, is what will determine what we see in the news.
Ed Fitzmaurice
Senior
