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Rule's text The Stranger Besides Me chronicles the intersection of her work as a crime journalist with her personal relationship with notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. As Bundy's crimes make headlines, Rule begins to have the horrifying realization that her sweet and sensitive colleague and friend Ted could be the person the nation is terrified of.

While there are many stories out there about Ted Bundy, Rule's text not only stands apart because of the two's personal friendship, but, more importantly, for her victim-forward approach to writing about true crime. Rather than allow Bundy to take precedence over the lives he took, Rule spends significant time telling the stories of the women he murdered beyond their deaths. Though she undoubtedly humanizes elements of Bundy throughout the text, she does not let him be "the star" and instead shines a light on the lives whose lights he extinguished.

Rule's treatment of Bundy's victims forced me to think not just about Bundy and his crimes, but the types of women he chose and the role that choice made in the coverage his crimes received. In choosing predominately young, white, pretty, college-aged women, Bundy brought more media attention to his victim's disappearances and deaths than he may have had he chosen different victims.

Bundy's victims "played well" on the evening news and their deaths provoked strong emotions in the public. People were shocked and angry that horrible things could happen to "good girls" who didn't seek out danger and who played by the rules. People felt, rightly so, for the victims and their families--but that's not the case for all victims of violent crime.

The attention the media and general public gave to Bundy's victims caused me to think about current crime coverage and what stories get heavy news coverage. I can easily name a dozen or more victims who look like Bundy's victims, but I can name fewer than five victims that don't. This made me want to explore why this is.

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The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy: The Shocking Inside ...

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Read 5,440 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Utterly unique in its astonishing intimacy, as jarringly frightening as when it first ap...

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Green River Killer: A True Detective Story

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Green River Killer: A True Detective Story

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While Jensen and Case's text is more focused on the police work it took to bring Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, to justice (and rightly so, Jensen's father was one of the lead detectives on the case), the text also shines a light on a very different victim type from the women Bundy preyed on. While Bundy's victims were largely middle class white women in their early 20s, Ridgeway's victims were predominately sex workers.

Ridgeway's victims were seen as less sympathetic in the general public's eyes due to their occupation and lifestyles. Additionally, many (though not all) had fewer local family and community ties than Bundy's victims, and their disappearances were not noticed as quickly. To compound this, when friends--often fellow sex workers--were to notice a woman's disappearance, they had to navigate an already distrustful relationship with police in order to bring attention to the matter.

As Ridgeway's victims were not all white, looking at this text made me think about the role race plays in victim sympathy or in media coverage. While these women's occupation as sex workers certainly contributed to the police, media, and general public's responses to their murders, what role does race play in shaping the response and sympathy of people to victims of violent crime?

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Green River Killer: A True Detective Story

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Read 588 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Throughout the 1980s, the highest priority of Seattle-area police was the apprehension of ...

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This four part HBO docuseries covers the work of The Black and Missing Foundation's creators Derrica and Natalie Wilson "as they fight an uphill battle to bring awareness to the Black missing person cases that are marginalized by law enforcement and national media."

Derrica and Natalie Wilson's life mission is to help bring attention to missing persons and victims of crime that may not otherwise get national media attention and to help victim's families advocate for their loved ones and access the tools they need to do so. Their motto is "to help us find us," a message that speaks to the community based activism that is often necessary in order to get BIPOC victims the attention they deserve.

I first heard Derrica and Natalie speak on an episode of the podcast My Favorite Murder (Episode #335) where podcasters Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark used their platform to bring further attention to the two women's work. Kilgariff and Hardstark, both white, are part of a movement in the true crime community seeking to change the narrative about which victims get media attention and focus. It is through this podcast episode that I learned about their work and sought out the HBO series.

The HBO series raised further questions for me about the role privilege plays in the attention victims receive. While racism (blatant or implicit) is certainly a factor in which missing faces get national media attention, myriad elements of privilege also play a factor. The more connections, resources, and knowledge a victim's family has, the easier time they may have in bringing their loved one's story to the public eye.

Derrica and Natalie's personal backgrounds demonstrate this. For two decades, Derrica worked in law enforcement and Natalie worked in public relations and media. They both know how the system works and who to reach out to in moments of crisis. They know how to advocate for missing persons and victims, and their credentials give them credibility in the eyes of police and media. Victims' families often do not have this background, and families in lower income brackets, who speak limited English, have had negative interactions with law enforcement, or whose immigration status isn't secure may find themselves unable or scared to get the attention they need for their loved ones.

Black and Missing Foundation: https://www.blackandmissinginc.com/
https://www.blackandmissinginc.com/statistics/

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Black and Missing is a four-part HBO documentary series by multiple Emmy winner Geeta Gandbhir and award-winning documentarian, journalist, author and activist Soledad O'Brien. The series follows sisters-in-law and Black and Missing Foundation founders Derrica and Natalie Wilson as they fight an uphill battle to bring awareness to the Black missing person cases that are marginalized by law enforcement and national media.

Haunted by these stories of vanished loved ones and driven by the need for attention and assistance for these forgotten women, former law enforcement officer Derrica and public relations expert Natalie operate a grassroots organization that raises awareness in communities, alerts media outlets to the plight of thousands of women and children, and urges police departments to allocate more resources to this scourge.

Black and Missing pulls back the curtain to explore how systemic behaviors and attitudes stem from centuries of deeply rooted racism. This intimate look at Derrica and Natalie's personal crusade to locate missing Black people also highlights stories of hope and closure as the Black and Missing Foundation contributes to the resolution of several high-profile missing person cases.

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Black and Missing | Official Website for the HBO Series | HBO.com

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Black and Missing is a four-part HBO documentary series by multiple Emmy winner Geeta Gandbhir and award-winning documentarian, journalist, author and activist Soledad O'Brien. The series follows sisters-in-law and Black and Missing Foundation founders Derrica and Natalie Wilson as they fight an uphill battle to bring awareness to the Black missing person cases that are marginalized by law enforcement and national media.

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The Columbia School of Journalism created a "press calculator" to demonstrate how age, gender, race, and location help contribute to press coverage of missing persons and to bring attention to the phenomenon of "Missing White Woman Syndrome."

As a 37 year old white woman from MA, I would, on average, appear in approximately 23 news stories. Fifteen years ago (in my early 20s) I would have appeared in over 120. Most of my coverage would be in local news outlets rather than national news outlets. At the most, 40% of Americans would hear about my disappearance.

While the calculator does not take into consideration things that might help me get more media attention like my occupation (teachers garner sympathy), my marital status (married, stepmother), and my family's resources (English speaking, positive relationships with police and lawyers, able to pay for private help), it does paint an interesting and eye opening picture. Throughout my research I've been primarily thinking about race and occupation as hinderances to media coverage, but I had not been thinking as much about age.

At 37, I'm aging out of news coverage. While I would still likely get more media attention than a BIPOC woman my age or a BIPOC man, the idea that I'm "too old" for people to care about my hypothetical disappearance was jarring and raised questions for me about the role age can play in victim coverage. It also made me question the role that motherhood plays in coverage. While the calculator did not take that into consideration, the stories of middle aged women I hear about most often focuses on their role as mothers; implying that mothers are more sympathetic in the public's eye than childless women. The sexist undertones of that could be another research project entirely, but are at least worth noting here in my research.

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BACK
How much coverage
are you worth?

By Kyle Pope

In 2004, speaking at a panel discussion, the late Gwen Ifill characterized the media's approach to covering people who have gone missing as "missing white woman syndrome." "If there's a missing white woman, you're going to cover that, every day," Ifill said, to little notice at the time.

In the two decades since, the term has attracted wider attention, as well as academic studies and media critiques. Shortly after Ifill's comments, Jon Stewart claimed, satirically, to have come up with an algorithm dictating media coverage of missing people: Family Income x (Abductee Cuteness ÷ Skin Color)2 + Length of Abduction x Media Savvy of Grieving Parents3.

Ifill's term has ebbed and flowed with the headlines; its most recent resurgence came in 2021, following the disappearance of Gabby Petito while on a road trip with her boyfriend.

What doesn't change is the media's insistence on reverting to the same coverage habits, 20 years after Ifill first called it out. The sad fact remains that in the United States, white people, particularly white women, garner much more media coverage when they go missing than any other group, significantly out of proportion to the number of cases. That means that time and again, media outlets are making judgments -often misguided judgments, not informed by data - about which missing persons cases to cover and which to ignore. And those coverage decisions have a significant influence on whether those people are found. In effect, newsrooms are making decisions on whose lives are worthy of attention- almost always resulting in coverage that is unrepresentative of the problem.
The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) is a database run by the US Department of Justice to track people who go missing in the country. Its online resource, under the headline "The Nation's Silent Mass Disaster," tracks more than 600,000 people who go missing in the United States every year. While many of them are quickly found, tens of thousands are not. About 4,400 unidentified bodies are recovered each year, with approximately 1,000 of those bodies remaining unidentified after one year. According to the Black and Missing Foundation, about 38 percent of people who go missing in the country are Black, much higher than the US Black population of about 14 percent. Cases involving Native Americans show similar disparities.

Earlier this year, the Columbia Journalism Review set out to understand the scope of the problem. Working with the ad agency TBWA/Chiat/Day/New York, our researchers sampled 3,600 articles about missing people that appeared last year, between January and November of 2021. We looked only at US news organizations, including TV, radio, newspapers, and online outlets. We then matched that sample with age, gender, and race classifiers tracked by NamUS, matching missing persons mentioned in the coverage to the data provided by NamUS.

What we found shows how little has changed in the last two decades. If you're young, white, female, and a resident of a big city, the coverage you'd receive if you went missing is vastly out of proportion.

For example, a white young adult woman who is reported missing in New York could be covered in 67 news stories, according to the CJR data, but a Latino male of the same age would appear in only 17. A middle-aged Black man who goes missing would be expected to receive four or fewer mentions in the press. A Black man who went missing in St. Louis, for instance, would only garner 12 news stories, while a young white woman from the same town would attract 10 times the media coverage.

To highlight the scale of the problem, CJR has developed a tool to test your own newsworthiness. By entering basic demographic data (none of which is saved by CJR) at www.areyoupressworthy.com, you can calculate your own worth, according to the American press.

Our hope is to force change from readers and viewers. Two decades of op-eds and research have not shifted ingrained newsroom habits; reporters continue to revert to skewed coverage, ignoring a much bigger story.

Go to www.areyoupressworthy.com. Share your findings on social media. And put pressure on your local newsroom when you see gaps in the coverage of your own community, so we won't be back having the same conversation 20 years from now.
Read more from CJR here.

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BACK By Kyle Pope In 2004, speaking at a panel discussion, the late Gwen Ifill characterized the media's approach to covering people who have gone missing as "missing white woman syndrome." "If there's a missing white woman, you're going to cover that, every day," Ifill said, to little notice at the time.

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News Media Can't Shake 'Missing White Woman Syndrome' Critics Say

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News Media Can't Shake 'Missing White Woman Syndrome' Critics Say

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Katie Robinson's article for the New York Times details the origins of the term "Missing White Woman Syndrome" (coined by late journalist Gwen Ifel) and critically analyzes the perpetuation of this media approach with the recent case of Gabby Petito.

According to Danielle Slakoff, an assistant professor at California State University Sacramento, not only do white women receive more initial coverage and repeated coverage, that coverage focuses their stories in a way that absolves them of their victimization.

Her analysis of news coverage demonstrates that in many stories "white women were typically depicted as good people, while women of color were often characterized as risk-takers or somehow complicit in their own disappearances."

She goes on to note that "'White victims tend to be portrayed as being in very safe environments, so it’s shocking that something like this could happen, whereas the Black and Latino victims are portrayed as being in unsafe environments, so basically normalizing victimization.'"

While one would be hard pressed to argue that Ms. Petito's disappearance should not be reported or investigated, it bears attention that some media outlets we, from their opening lines, hyper focusing on her race in their coverage. As Hakeem Jefferson, assistant professor of political science at Stanford University notes, one Washington Post article described Petito as a "'“blue-eyed, blonde adventure-seeker'" from their opening lines, details that, according to Jefferson, are not "pertinent to the story" and "'unnecessarily racializ[e]" the victim.

Multiple sources within the article reference the reasons behind the perpetuating cycle, but there does not appear to be an answer for the questions I still have. If we know this is a thing, how do battle back against it? How should the news media cover missing persons in a fairer way? Since it's impossible to cover all stories of missing persons or victims of violent crime, what metrics should be used for determining if a story gets news coverage?

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Major outlets have highlighted the case of Gabrielle Petito while often ignoring stories about women of color who go missing.

Journalists gathered on Wednesday at a nature reserve in Venice, Fla., where the authorities are looking for Gabrielle Petito's fiancé, who is a person of interest in the case. Credit... Eve Edelheit for The New York Times

On Monday night, the MSNBC host Joy Reid invited two women on her show, " The ReidOut," to discuss the case of Gabrielle Petito, a 22-year-old woman whose disappearance during a cross-country road trip generated a cascade of front-page headlines, news alerts and prime-time segments on cable news channels.

The guests, Lynnette Grey Bull and Derrica Wilson, are advocates for missing Indigenous and Black women and children, and they argued that the kind of media attention Ms. Petito's disappearance was getting was sorely lacking when it came to the hundreds of disappearances that didn't involve white women.

Ms. Reid pointed out that the PBS anchor Gwen Ifill, the journalist who broke barriers as a Black woman in the Washington press corps, coined a term for the phenomenon nearly two decades ago: "missing white woman syndrome."

"The Petito family certainly deserve answers and justice," Ms. Reid said on air. "But the way this story has captivated the nation has many wondering, why not the same media attention when people of color go missing?"

The coverage of Ms. Petito's disappearance in August, the discovery of her remains and the search for her missing fiancé, Brian Laundrie, 23, has been relentless, with three front-page articles in The New York Post in less than a week. The New York Times published a breaking news story and a live briefing, and sent a news alert to subscribers.

"Any story that captivates the nation and our readers like this one is front-page worthy," a New York Post spokeswoman said in a statement. The Times had no comment.

There were also live briefings from Newsweek and The Independent, a British publication, and frequent segments on cable news channels. On Wednesday morning, the day after a coroner confirmed that the remains were Ms. Petito's and determined her death a likely homicide, the case was the main story on the Fox News website, as well as a top online story at The Washington Post, USA Today, BuzzFeed, ABC News, CBS News, CNN and NBC News.

The intensity of the coverage has mirrored the interest of social media users, who have discussed and debated the case on TikTok, Instagram and Twitter as they pored over the videos and photos posted by Ms. Petito on YouTube and Instagram during her summertime cross-country trip. As of Wednesday morning, the hashtag #gabbypetito had received more than 794 million views on TikTok.

The demographic makeup of major news organizations is another factor in the emphasis on narratives of white women who go missing or are murdered, said Martin G. Reynolds, co-executive director of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

"What I'm most concerned about is the amount of coverage, and if you look at newsrooms, the coverage decisions are made in places that continue to be disproportionately white," said Mr. Reynolds, whose organization works with journalists of color. "These cases tend to involve white, middle-class women. And that resonates with assignment editors and news organizations. The one area of diversity that has actually improved relatively well in news media is actually women, particularly white women, in leadership roles."

The disappearances of people of color tend not to generate the same volume of media interest, despite their occurring at a higher rate. A report from the University of Wyoming found that 710 Indigenous people were reported missing from 2011 to 2020 in that state, which is where Ms. Petito's remains were found.

Fifty-seven percent of those were women, and 85 percent were children. A study in 2016 of four national and local news outlets found that Black people were "significantly underrepresented" in coverage of missing persons compared with their numbers in the F.B.I.'s tally of cases.

Ms. Ifill, who died in 2016 after a distinguished career that included stints at The Washington Post, The Times and NBC News before she became co-anchor of "PBS NewsHour," raised the issue of what she called "missing white woman syndrome" at a journalism conference in 2004. "If there's a missing white woman, we are going to cover that, every day," she noted wryly.

In the years since, national news outlets have continued to deliver frequent, detailed reports that made young, white women such as Natalee Holloway, who disappeared in 2005 while vacationing in Aruba, into household names.

"Research, including my own work, has shown that white missing women and girls do receive more initial coverage and they do receive more repeated coverage," said Danielle Slakoff, an assistant professor at California State University, Sacramento, who researches criminal justice and the media.

She said that white women were typically depicted as good people, while women of color were often characterized as risk-takers or somehow complicit in their own disappearances.

"White victims tend to be portrayed as being in very safe environments, so it's shocking that something like this could happen, whereas the Black and Latino victims are portrayed as being in unsafe environments, so basically normalizing victimization," she said.

Ms. Slakoff added that there were a number of reasons people were interested in Ms. Petito's case. The road trip was documented by Ms. Petito on social media, providing glimpses into her life. People wanted to feel that they were part of the story by helping to solve her disappearance and were connecting with others by tracking what was happening and trading information. But the amount of coverage threatened to turn the case into "entertainment," she added.

"I don't think we can discount the profit motive and the fact that, historically, these types of stories have gotten tons of engagement, viewers and clicks," Ms. Slakoff said. "So I do think it could be argued that it's kind of this vicious cycle."

Stewart Coles, a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Illinois's communications department, said the public interest in Ms. Petito's case had helped drive the media coverage, but did not account for all of it.

"We have to consider how sometimes choices about what stories are read and what we know are based on what gatekeepers within the media industry think that people want to know about," he said. "And if those individuals think that people are more interested in a missing white woman, they are going to give us information on missing white women."

On Twitter last Thursday, Hakeem Jefferson, an assistant professor of political science at Stanford University, was critical of a Washington Post article that described Ms. Petito as a "blue-eyed, blonde adventure-seeker." He noted that those details were not pertinent to the story and "unnecessarily racializes the missing person from the jump."

"Journalists should be more careful in their coverage of these cases, lest they perpetuate an already unequal visibility landscape for victims who don't fit the mold," Mr. Jefferson said in an interview.

A Washington Post spokeswoman said: "As we reported, race and gender are often the reason these stories go viral, which adds a level of complexity when running a photo or description."

On Monday, Ana Navarro, a political commentator for CNN and a weekly guest host of ABC's "The View," commented on Twitter that while she was glad the case of Ms. Petito was getting a lot of attention, "I just want there to be same interest and energy re every disappeared young woman in America - Brown, Black, Native-American, transgender."

Her post was flooded with replies by people sharing images and descriptions of loved ones who were still missing.

Tiffany Hsu contributed reporting.

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News Media Can't Shake 'Missing White Woman Syndrome,' Critics Say

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Major outlets have highlighted the case of Gabrielle Petito while often ignoring stories about women of color who go missing. On Monday night, the MSNBC host Joy Reid invited two women on her show, " The ReidOut," to discuss the case of Gabrielle Petito, a 22-year-old woman whose disappearance during a cross-country road trip generated a cascade of front-page headlines, news alerts and prime-time segments on cable news channels.

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True Crime Podcasts React to Gabby Petito Case

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True Crime Podcasts React to Gabby Petito Case

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As a means of pushing back against the "Missing White Woman Syndrome" coverage of Gabby Petito's murder, some true crime podcasts used their platforms to bring attention to  BIPOC women who have gone missing under similar circumstances or in the same area as Petito.

On My Favorite Murder, Georgia Hardstark worked to bring attention to the fact that between 2011 and 2020, "710 Indigenous people were reported missing across Wyoming, and that between 2000 and 2020, Indigenous homicide victims accounted for 21% of all homicides, though they make up only 3% of the state’s population" (as reported by Hallie Golden for The Guardian). Rather than provide more of the same coverage of Petito's case, Hardstark drew a through-line to the cases of three missing Indigenous women from the area in which Petito's body was found: Kaina Klomp, Amber Tuccaro, and Ella Mae Begay.

Similarly, while Ashley Flowers of Crime Junkie did provide some coverage of the Petito case, she married that coverage with the story of Lauren Cho, a young woman who walked away from the camper she and a male friend were staying in. She and the male friend had been arguing, and she walked away without her cell phone, food, or water. Her body was found about a month later in the Yucca Desert. Her case is still open.

Both episodes demonstrate a way in which some media outlets, in this case podcasts, can help advance stories of BIPOC individuals, but the lack of coverage for these stories is still problematic. These podcasts are sought out by people with an interest in the subject matter (true crime), and podcasters know they are speaking to a sympathetic audience. While their focus on lesser known stories is laudable, it does not challenge more mainstream news coverage to examine it's own biases or choices.

My Favorite Murder: Episode #296
Crime Junkie: Episode "Missing: Gabby Petito"

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The Knight Foundation's page on the importance of racial diversity in newsrooms speaks to one of the questions I have been coming back to in regards to media representation in true crimes: what can be done?

While the article is not specifically about the missing persons or the victims of true crime, it highlights the racial disparities in most newsrooms and speaks to the way a homogenized group of gatekeepers can, either intentionally or inadvertently, can prevent stories about BIPOC individuals from getting the same coverage as stories about white individuals.

More diverse representation in newsrooms and journalism programs could help change which stories are getting the most attention and air time.

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A spate of police and vigilante slayings of unarmed African Americans has renewed handwringing over the nation's comparative lack of Black journalists, the headlines they cover and workplace bias they still sometimes face. How the industry confronts that decades-old conundrum, this time around, remains to be seen.

"The thing that frustrates me more than anything is that many of these [news] managers come out with these statements that say 'We support black lives' ... that they support diversity, they support inclusion. Yet, when we ask them to publicize their numbers on diversity, they're silent," National Association of Black Journalists President Dorothy Tucker said, during a recent episode of Knight's Informed & Engaged series.

An investigative reporter for Chicago's CBS affiliate, she was one of four Black journalists assembled for that online discussion, also exploring recent Gallup/Knight and Pew research showing Black and white news consumers' often divergent views of the news media and the kind of workforce diversity that the industry should pursue.

In the aftermath of George Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, Tucker added, there's been a merited "uprising" of sorts among Black journalists who've long fought, in many cases, for equitable pay and for a chance at the industry's more coveted, high-profile assignments.

Referring to the news media's latest internal reckoning over race, speaker Jawan Strader, an anchor-reporter at Miami's NBC affiliate, said, "We have their ear, more so, than we had before, since George Floyd. We should have had their ears years ago ... "
A racial divide over news coverage
The episode of Informed and Engaged kicked off with a rundown of several key findings of landmark research by both the Pew Research Center and the Gallup/Knight series on Trust, Media and Democracy. Among the highlights:

Americans agree that newsrooms need to be diverse, but Blacks would like to see more racial diversity, while whites prefer more political diversity (Gallup/Knight)

Blacks are underrepresented as newsroom employees in the U.S. (Pew)

Most Americans say news organizations don't understand them, but Black adults more often say it's because of their social or economic class, or personal characteristics, while whites says it's because of their political views. (Pew)
Who's in the newsroom matters
Black journalists with decision-making power or their boss's confidence can make a big difference in news coverage. For example, New York-based ProPublica investigative reporter Topher Sanders, another speaker, said the ProPublica/Florida Times-Union Walking While Black series, a seven-month reporting project, began as a smaller endeavour. The series found that Blacks made up 29 percent Jacksonville, Florida's population but received 55 percent of its pedestrian citations.

"When I brought the concept to the editor, the editor said, 'Hey, take a few weeks on this, let's turn in something quick. There's this other big thing I want you to do," said Sanders, co-founder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, who worked on the series with reporter Ben Conarck. "To that editor's credit, as we presented more and more material, the editor began to see the vision me and Ben saw in the very beginning, "

Diversifying investigative teams is important, the speakers said.

"When those are your gold-standard reporting teams within an organization and they lack diversity, what types of projects will be pursued?" added Sanders, whose nonprofit society is building what now is a comparatively small supply of investigative journalists of color. "It's a no-brainer that, when you have diverse thoughts and perspectives, it shows up in the work. And it starts to show up in the community. Lots of times, the work generated from investigative reporting has real impact."
Black journalists' objectivity continues to be questioned
"Are Black journalists biased? Because there's that assumption," said moderator Karen Rundlet, a Knight Foundation journalism program director and former journalist.

"No," answered an emphatic Tucker. "It really upsets me when anybody even raises that question - because you don't ask white journalists are they biased ... We're professional, we do our jobs, we can cover any story, we can look at every angle ...

"But we have to bring our experiences to the story. And that's what makes us have the advantage in a newsroom. Because we are Black, because we understand what that person in the neighborhood may be going through, because we speak the language, because we share a culture, then, we can bring all of that to the story that, perhaps, someone who is not Black cannot bring."
Challenging newsroom culture is key
News coverage and who shapes it is only one aspect of the present challenges to diversity, said Karen Hawkins, The Chicago Reader's co-editor in chief.

"The other part of that equation is newsroom culture," she said. " ... and the culture of newsrooms that supports this status quo idea that you have to be straight and white and middle class in order to be objective, that that is the default position for viewing the world. And if you're not those things, then you are biased."

Sanders interjected. "The positioning of bias versus objectivity is false in and of itself, the two are not polar opposites... I have a view point, I have a perspective. It doesn't make its way into my news coverage, but it does guide my interest."

"Walking While Black," he said, resulted from seeing the story through his particular lens, he said. He'd watched the viral video of Jacksonville police officers illegally stop a young Black man, ask for his I.D and try to ticket him for not having it.

"I was offended that the officer tried to, basically, say, 'Hey, can I see you're walking papers' ... That's where I start to put on my skills hat. I know how to obtain the data to show that they've done that before ... As a journalist I can ask educated questions that can lead to a story that has profound impact on that issue."

"It's ok to add perspective as a journalist," Strader said. "Yes, I'm a journalist. At the same time, I'm a black man."
Incomplete data on newsrooms' racial make-up continues
In 2018, just 17% of the nation's then 1,700 members of the American Society of News Editors answered its annual diversity survey. It was a historic low for that survey, launched in 1998. In 2019, 22% of newsrooms responded to the survey, now conducted by the News Leaders Association, the umbrella organization for ASNE and Associated Press Media Editors. The association hasn't released its 2020 report.

But the latest Radio Television News Directors Association diversity survey, released in September 2020, received what researchers said were valid responses from 1,313, or 77%, of 1,702 non-satellite TV stations and from a random sample of more than 3,400 radio stations.

That there is no full accounting of news media diversity being done by industry leaders is problematic, Tucker said.

Even so, amid current protests over police brutality and a range of race-driven social inequities, including in journalism, she has been fielding several calls a week with news executives asking her organization's advice.

"But it's very difficult for us to measure success when we don't have the data," Tucker said. "The concern is maybe they don't look that good."

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The racial divide on news coverage, and why representation matters

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A spate of police and vigilante slayings of unarmed African Americans has renewed handwringing over the nation's comparative lack of Black journalists, the headlines they cover and workplace bias they still sometimes face. How the industry confronts that decades-old conundrum, this time around, remains to be seen.