Thursday, March 30, 2006
Accused killer in controversial murder case goes on trial
By Mark Memmott
USA Today
3/30/06
Excerpt:
A case that spotlighted whether the national media only care about
missing persons if they're young, white women is about to get its day
in court.
Christopher Hampton, 26, is accused of killing Tamika Huston, 24, in Spartanburg, S.C. His murder trial starts [Monday, April 1].
Huston disappeared from her home there in late
May 2004. Her body wasn't found until mid-August 2005, after Hampton
led police to the remains. In the 15 months between, her family
telephoned and e-mailed journalists. They pointed out the similarities
between Huston's story and those of other missing women then in the
news, including Laci Peterson, Lori Hacking and — later — Natalee
Holloway. Like those women, Huston was young, attractive and had
vanished. But unlike those women, Huston was black.
Her case got almost no attention from the
national media, until some (including USA Today) examined whether the
media were ignoring minorities and men. ...
But lack of interest in Hampton's trial should
not be taken as a sign the media are still only interested in missing
white women, say both Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson
and Keith Woods, dean of faculty at the Poynter Institute, a school for
professional journalists. Both were critical last year of the media's
work.
Now, Woods says, "we can celebrate some
progress." Most recently, the cable news networks and other national
media quickly picked up and reported on the March 19 disappearances of
two black boys in Milwaukee. Quadrevion Henning, 12, and Purvis
Virginia Parker, 11 ...
Robinson sees "a few more instances of people of color popping on and off the media's radar screens."
Some in the media concede, though, that there's room for more progress.
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