I was pretty surprised to read this actually.  I knew there was bias in media, but I guess I hadn’t thought about how much of it there really was until this article and the linked one here at USA TODAY opened my eyes.   As  I mentioned in my post regarding D (please click here to scoot back to that post) it’s really not so important that D was transgendered or that Ms. Figueroa was Hispanic.  What matters is that these are people.  They are valuable, they are not throw away.  They all deserve to get as much respect, attention and justice as we can give them seeing that their perpetrators preferred to treat them as objects of contempt.

And the media bias is really troubling.  Why is it that this kind of bias exists.  Perhaps the quote by Michael Bass, as I have copied in here from the USA TODAY article holds the key:

     Michael Bass, senior executive producer at The Early Show
on CBS, echoed on Thursday comments made previously by television
producers when asked about whether they favor stories about white
women.
    "It’s the story that drives our decision (on
coverage) rather than the gender or race," he said. Bass said his staff
heard about the case from the CBS affiliate in Philadelphia, "though we
look at the web, too. … It’s possible someone in our group saw it
there first."

So in some sense the coverage (and perhaps any attention from the authorities?) was a function of consumption - that is - consumer consumption of news.   And if that’s the source driver for news choice, then, what does that say about our society?  Maybe it says we still have a long way to go to accept all our citizens as people.   Maybe it says that you have to be "pretty" to get justice.  I don’t really like those conclusions; they scare me.  They bring to light that our society, (as blessed as it is here in the U.S.A. and as grateful as I am to live and work here), has a ways to go to accept, support and love one another.   I think Marin Luther’s dream (which you can hear by clicking  here) still has some room before it’s reality - for all of us: white, Hispanic, transgendered, gay, Asian or any other denomination you’d like.