Thirteen women murdered and killer still at large. Media ignores story.

My sister Miriam, who lives in New Mexico sent me the following guest post:

Time Magazine finally has a short story about it this week.

But have you heard anywhere else about the fact that 13 bodies have been found buried in the mesa west of Albuquerque, near where a new development was being started? A woman walking her dog discovered the first skeleton back in early February, and since then crews have unearthed 12 more, including a skeleton of woman carrying a fetus. All of the victims are female, and the killings appear to have happened about 5 years ago, in 2004. Only 3 of the 13 have been identified, and there is no lead on who the killer may have been.

Why isn't an undentified serial killer headline news? The American appetite for sensational news would seem to beg for this to be a top story, but the only news about this string of murders had been from local news outlets (including an insightful commentary from a local independent publication.) CNN, ABC, the AP – the national news outlets – have only had occasional second-teir mention; a ticker at the bottom of the screen mentioned it for a day or two, and then it dissapeared, despite the fact that bodies continued to be discovered for several weeks. Web sites with mention are few and far between.

I think this story is not high priority for a reason, and that reasons shows that our country is far from the enlightened, fair-minded populace that we hoped the election of Barak Obama would help reveal. The first young woman's body was identified as a “prostitute and a drug-user.” The next 2 who have been identified also had a history of prostitution. So, that's the issue – apparently if a young girl is troubled and finds herself earning money in way not sanctioned by society (although obviously serving a business need successfully enough to be the “world's oldest profession”) she is a throw-away. Her murder doesn't matter. Violence against women- even when it results in murder – wasn't reason enough to raise this to the national conciousness. Indeed, even after the Albuquerque police department received reports several years ago about a number of missing women (someone out there DID love them after all), apparently the effort needed to find and stop the killer was not a high priorty. As NM Representative Linda Lopez (D-ABQ) eloquently stated on March 12 (in a story also reported only in the independent media) “the police have characterized the dead women not as victims of crime, but as criminals themselves.” Lopez, to her great credit, brought attention to the issue at a session of the State Legistlature by bringing a “State Memorial” (SM 85) which takes the both the press and the police to task for their treatment of the crimes. Her symbolic Memoral states:

WHEREAS, the women whose remains have been identified in the west mesa mass grave site have been depicted by both the police and many members of the media not as victims of violence and crime, but rather as criminals themselves; and

WHEREAS, the labeling of these victims creates an atmosphere of ambivalence with regard to the crimes that have been perpetrated against them, while also denying their humanity and their role in our communities as daughters, mothers, sisters,
cousins, nieces and granddaughters; …

The Memorial goes on to note the significance of the issue of poverty and violence against women in New Mexico, which she notes has the third-highest domestic violence rate in the country.

Representative Lopez's Memorial is right on target, but it is unlikely to raise the horrific nature of the event beyond state borders, despite the fact the very lack of attention being paid by the national press indicates this is much more than a local issue. If 13 middle-class soccer moms were killed and buried for 5 years without notice, the revealation would overtake the press for weeks, silencing all other issues with the media frenzy. That, of course, is the other end of the spectrum, but this story does at least deserve the respect of bringing issues of violence toward women – and a potential serial killer on the loose – the attention they legitimately deserve.

I would add that my sister is right about the double standard applied to women. We've seen the media obsess for months about the disappearance or murder of a single 'good' girl (like Natalie Holloway or Lacey Peterson) but they don't care if something happens to a 'bad' girl (they get to define who is 'good' and who is 'bad,' according to their own definition of morality of course.)

The conduct of the police here bears a disturbing resemblance to another case I once blogged on, in which a rape victim was arrested and the investigation into the rape closed all because she once had a juvenile arrest warrant that was years old). The job of the police is to solve the crime. It is not to be the judge and jury, and certainly not to prioritize solving the crime according to their view of the worthiness of the victim to receive their help.

Why does it take a Michael Moore to do what the News isn't doing anymore?

As soon as I have an opportunity, I plan to go see Sicko, Michael Moore's new documentary. I figure with all the conservatives who claim they won't be going, I should be able get a pretty good seat.

Sicko is Moore's fourth major documentary. The first three, which made Moore a very rich man, were Roger and Me, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11.

Are Moore's documentaries biased? Of course they are. They certainly do only tell one side of the story. On the other hand, documentaries historically do tell a story that isn't being told; and the people on the other side, usually the rich and the powerful, generally have been telling their story for a very long time, maybe not to us but certainly they've been telling it to Congressmen and Senators, and maybe even to Presidents. Besides, documentary makers have an easy out when it comes to telling the other side of the story. All they need do is invite the people on the other side to come and be interviewed. They may accept, but if they do they will certainly be confronted with some of the very embarrassing situations that are likely to be profiled on the documentary and asked some questions that there is no good answer for (the truth would be about the worst one they could give.) They could decline (in which case you will hear a line about how 'so and so was invited but declined a request for an interview,' or they did not respond-- and still have that noted.) Of course Moore used a third option in some of his earlier documentaries, literally hounding and peppering with questions people who weren't willing to be interviewed otherwise.

Why is Moore making documentaries?

That's easy. Because the people who should make them, the major news networks, have quit doing their job. Documentaries are supposed to bring us the stories that aren't being told, they should be the media getting behind the scenes and giving us the picture that someone else would rather that we not see. Years ago, there were some great documentaries made by CBS, ABC and NBC. The best examples are Harvest of Shame, the 1960 gold standard by which all documentaries are measured, in which Edward R. Murrow profiled the plight of migrant farmworkers, and Hearts and Minds, the 1974 documentary directed by Peter Davis about the Vietnam war that largely provided a new framework for how we talk about war, especially guerilla conflicts.

Were those documentaries controversial? Absolutely. Were they biased? Perhaps, though (like Moore) they provided raw facts and first hand footage, not edited to make it easier to swallow or sugar coated so Aunt Sophie wouldn't lose her appetite.

But today, the major news networks hardly ever make anything that could be called a 'documentary' anymore. So Moore (and last year, Al Gore who inconveniently for the right stepped in when Moore was taking a year off putting together 'Sicko') are merely filling a niche that has been vacated by the news media who should be guardians of the news, and who should be telling the untold stories.

So the real question isn't about Michael Moore, it is why have the major networks quit making documentaries? Is it because they are afraid of controversy? Maybe, although they certainly don't seem to have a problem with controversy when it comes to pushing the envelope with how much sexual innuendo they can put on TV, or if it is of the Jerry Springer/Montel Williams variety. Is it that they don't have the staff to do it anymore? Perhaps, but then why do they have so many reporters devoted to telling us every detail of what is going on with Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Tom Cruise? Is it because they aren't cost effective? Maybe, and it is true that it costs a lot more to send a reporter and film crew to some small town in the jungle someplace than it costs to film another vapid sitcom in studio 17-B. But Moore has made a ton of cash from people plonking down their money to see his documentaries, which suggests that the networks could get some decent ratings and turn a profit from them if they wanted to.

I think though that the real reason why the news networks have gotten out of the documentary business and left it to Moore is because they are no longer independent corporations. CBS is owned by Time-Warner, ABC is owned by Disney, NBC is owned by General Electric and FOX is part of the corporate empire of Rupert Murdoch. The truth is, while for the most part the corporate leadership doesn't interfere with the news divisions in any of these companies, when it comes to influencing public policy they do. A good well put together documentary can do a great deal to influence public debate and policy on an issue (as Harvest of Shame did, and as Hearts and Minds, which was finished too late to influence Vietnam, has influenced the way we think about civilian populations and modern warfare. And the truth be told, the corporate titans really don't want to rock the boat and influence public policy other than by their own very deliberate lobbying and campaign donations.

Now they are probably thinking, if they could just figure out a way to buy Michael Moore....

Some questions about the McCann kidnapping:

Like millions of other people around the world, I am praying and hoping that they find four year old Briton Madeleine McCann, who was apparently abducted from a hotel room at a resort in Portugal on May 2. Or if it turns out she is dead already, we may hope that at least the perpetrators are brought to justice.

However, there are some hard questions that need to be asked.

For one, it is hard to criticize grieving, concerned parents, but it is a fact that while Madeleine was abducted, she was watching her brother and sister. Both aged two. Her parents had sauntered off for a leisurely lunch, leaving a four year old in charge of two two year olds (and in a foreign country, at that). To be honest, if they get her back I hope the next thing that happens is that Madeleine and her siblings are immediately taken into protective custody by the state. I mean, even forget about the possibility of such an abduction. There are plenty of kids that age who die just in accidents, drowning in the bathtub or pulling an appliance down on top of them while trying to climb on it. Or they could figure out a way to unlatch the door and wander out onto a busy street. Or they could guzzle down a bottle of liquid Drano. I could go on with a lot more, but you get the idea. This is parental negligence of the first magnitude, and I guarantee you that had Madeleine been found safely within a short time, today none of the kids would be living with the parents.

For another, I have to (once again) point a finger at the media. Are there likely to be any people in the United States who will know information that may help the police in Portugal, that justifies this kind of blanket coverage? It is sensationalist media at its zenith. And Madeleine is exactly who they like to cover-- a young, pretty blonde girl. If you got all your information from the news media, you'd think that only pretty blonde girls ever disappeared. But that simply is not the case.

To begin with, a 2002 study of missing kids sponsored by the Justice Department found that 54% of missing children are white. That means that 46% are not. But the missing children shown on television are almost all white. Is it more important to find a white kid than a black or Hispanic kid? Apparently so, according to a lot of news stations because they invariably show you the picture of the white kid.

Also, it turns out that 53% of missing children are male. But missing boys aren't usually as pretty so they tend to focus almost exclusively on missing girls. That is one reason wny child sex predator Michael Devlin was able to live with a kidnapped boy right in the middle of an apartment complex in Missouri for four years, and only got caught when he was seen abducting another boy.

I have no problem with coverage of missing children in general. But what I'd like to see is a local focus on missing kids that someone around here actually might know something about.