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... The story makes the local televised news and is mentioned in the newspaper print. ... There are no indications to whether or not she is still alive and there are very few clues to help investigators figure out where she has disappeared to. ... While Laci Peterson’s story continues to hit the local, national, and cable news networks, Evelyn Hernandez has become a forgotten cause.
Evelyn Hernandez is not a name many were aware of and even fewer will remember. Like many other cases involving minorities, Evelyn Hernandez’s case fell through the cracks of public awareness because of an unfair racial bias not many in the news media will admit exists. The mere thought of a racial bias in what is often described as a “liberal media” is an idea almost immediately disregarded. No one can deny that the news is an effective resource that helps the police and such authorities solve crimes and help find missing persons, but the racial bias within the news media has become a discriminating public relations agent; an agent that will drive the support of the public and the police towards those it chooses to feature: typically attractive, white, middle-class, all Americans-leaving those who are poor or minority to believe that society doesn‘t give their loved ones the same attention and priority. We cannot let the news media go unaware of this situation.
Sharon Rocha, mother of Laci Peterson, shed her tears and made pleas for her daughter all over the news during several heartbreaking news conferences. The family was given the opportunity to broadcast pictures and footage of their daughter during a 4 month investigation period over the airwaves, routinely making it as a top news story. The expansive coverage on the local news, the national news (ABC, NBC, and CBS), as well as cable networks (CNN, FOX News, and MSNBC), accompanied by Laci’s appeal to the public as an all American girl next door, kept the interest in her case at a consistent level. ... Laci Peterson, even before the arrest of her husband, was featured in twenty four articles in the San Francisco Chronicle, four of them being front page news. ... " - Twiggy Damy (San Francisco Chronicle)
But advocates for missing adults, including those for Hernandez, do not begrudge the support Laci Peterson has received; they are devastated by the disparity. There are few answers to why Laci Peterson has become a media darling while cases like Hernandez, even with their similar circumstances, are easily forgotten, besides racial and social bias. Media watchdog organizations say unless the victim is blonde, attractive or perceived as All-American, theres little interest.
"If Laci Peterson had been black, it wouldnt have been an important case," Cristina Azocar of San Francisco State Universitys NewsWatch, a media oversight group, explains.
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Approximate Pages = 9
(250 words per page double spaced)
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