Soledad O’Brien:
Yes, because I don't think anybody has really thought about, well, why do we not care? Is it that people in media are cold and callous and don't care about stories? I don't believe that's true.
I think there's a lot of bias involved. And missing white woman syndrome, as Gwen called it and penned it originally, I guess, also includes the wall-to-wall coverage that actually gets communities up in arms, to the point where you have people flying themselves to Aruba to help look for Natalee Holloway.
So it's not even just the media. It's this idea of like, why do people as a whole just not care? In our documentary, we profile a young woman, a beautiful young woman, who's Black who goes missing. And then a couple of weeks later, Natalee Holloway goes missing.
And her aunt describes what it's like to watch the attention that Natalee Holloway — I remember I covered the Natalee Holloway case. What a horrific story for her mom to go on newscast after newscast to beg for information about her daughter.
But, at the same time, the aunt who's looking for her niece is saying, why does no one cares about my niece? And she's reaching out to these news organizations. She's a TV producer. She has some wherewithal about how to navigate. She can't get any attention.
And so I think it's about, why do we care about some people and why do we not care about others? I personally believe it's a lot of bias. I know, when I have done documentaries that focus on people of color, "Black in America," "Latino in America," I have been told, listen, don't make it to Black. Make sure that you don't push away the audience we really care about, which is to say the white audience.
So I think there's often a sense of, our audience is this. This is a person who's appealing, attractive, interesting to me as a producer. And, therefore, that's what should get the focus, vs. thinking about, what are the communities that you serve, and how do you serve those communities?
In our doc, we talk to a former news president who says race is not a factor.
That is just not true. That is just absolutely not true. The data does not hold that up. And so I think, until newsrooms are willing to say, like, why do we not care, maybe we should examine that, I don't know that you're going to get a lot of movement.
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