White Woman Gets Another Headline

Brittany Zimmerman was found murdered on April 2nd. Earlier that evening she had managed to call 911. Not hearing anything on the line, the 911 operator did address the situation as an emergency. Turns out that when the 911 tapes were released, you can hear signs of struggle. The county has of course come under scrutiny for this lapse in procedure. Her murderer has not been found.
This morning I opened up cnn.com to find this cold case has the top headline slot. And there was a very large picture of Ms. Zimmerman.
Let’s look at Ms. Zimmerman. She’s white. She has pretty blue eyes and red hair. She was young, she was pretty, and she was in college. This fits a very old pattern of affluent white women and girls getting extensive media coverage when it comes to their cases. Wikipedia calls it Missing White Woman Syndrome; though I’m not sure that’s the correct term, the entry lists a lot of cases of white women hogging the spotlight. The easiest example is Natalee Holloway. Elizabeth Smart, Laci Peterson, and Caylee Anthony have all also been extensively covered by the news media. And yet Ramona Moore was a black college student who didn’t get nearly the attention- her family even had trouble convincing the police that she was in trouble. Because she was black.
This saturation of coverage of while women needs to stop. It’s great that CNN is keeping cold cases going, but why not feature Chanel Petro-Nixon, a equally pretty young student who’s murder is also a cold case. Why Ms. Zimmerman? CNN will likely defend their choice by saying the 911 tapes make it an extraordinarily interesting case. But CNN sometimes covers interesting local murder cases, but I have never seen one get the top headline unless it is a white girl or woman.
The cold cases featured on cnn.com are all from Nancy Grace’s television show. Ms. Grace bills herself as a victim’s advocate. She’s made herself famous with her passionate and bullheaded attacks against those she sees as hurting weaker humans (namely children and women). I’m not a fan of her show, so I’m not sure if Ms. Grace falls into the White saturation pit, but the pieces that I’ve seen have been her covering Ms. Smart’s case, and Caylee Anthony’s case.

Disclaimer: This post was written by a Feministing Community user and does not necessarily reflect the views of any Feministing columnist, editor, or executive director.

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