*MSNBC host Joy Reid is catching heat for criticizing the media’s coverage of YouTuber Gabby Petito. While Black, indigenous and women of color go missing or are found dead almost daily, the media only fixates on murdered white women. Joy Reid calls it “missing White woman syndrome.”
The FBI confirmed on Tuesday that the remains found Sunday in an area of Wyoming’s Bridger-Teton National Forest were those Petito, 22, whose boyfriend is a person of interest in the killing but law enforcement can’t find him as he is on the run.
Petito’s death is being used as a distraction from Biden’s vaccine mandates, the Haitian migrant crisis in Texas, and the quiet ushering of Afghanis into America.
During a segment on her show “The ReidOut,” Reid noted that the media doesn’t cover non-White people when they go missing.
Watch the moment via the clip below.
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“No one is looking for us.” With all the coverage on the Gabby Petito case, Joy Reid calls out the media’s obsession with missing white women, and calls it “missing white woman syndrome”. pic.twitter.com/FPbA3bHjNq
— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) September 21, 2021
“It goes without saying that no family should ever have to endure that kind of pain. And the Petito family certainly deserves answers and justice,” Reid said. “But the way this story has captivated the nation has many wondering, why not the same media attention when people of color go missing?”
“Well, the answer actually has a name: Missing White woman syndrome. The term coined by the late and great Gwen Iffil to describe the media and public fascination with missing White women like Laci Peterson or Natalee Holloway, while ignoring cases involving missing people of color,” she added.
Reid then referred to the case of geologist Daniel Robinson, 24, a Black man who went missing earlier this year. Reid said she had “never heard of it until this friend of mine sent it to me. And I guess, that’s the issue, isn’t it?”
Panelist Derrica Wilson of Black and Missing Foundation agreed, adding: “It is definitely the issue. And we have been sounding the alarm for nearly 14 years because of this. When it comes to missing persons of color, men, women and children, our cases are not taken seriously and no one is looking for us if we were to go missing.”
“One of the main factors and one of the key factors that a lot of people don’t want to talk about is that it’s racism. It’s systemic racism,” said panelist Lynette Grey Bull of the Not Our Native Daughters Foundation.
Absolutely correct. https://t.co/szHsJPefTa
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) September 20, 2021
Author Stephen King co-signed Reid’s stance. Fellow writer Don Winslow noted that the media tends to ignore women of color who disappear.
“I am 67 years old,” Winslow tweeted. “I have never seen a young Black woman’s disappearance covered like the #gabbypetitio disappearance,” he wrote Sunday. “Not once. That is horribly wrong.”
King retweeted Winslow’s post and commented, “Absolutely correct.”
Do you agree with Reid? Sound off in the comments.
