![\"Amanda](\"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/67491000\/jpg\/_67491751_family.jpg\")
In other words, the victim is white and middle class. Ideally, she is saved – by a white guy.<\/p>\n
“Our victims are colour-coded,” says McIlwain. A proper victim is one who looks like a journalist, he says.<\/p>\n
“Research shows that in terms of crime victims, they are people who we view as being like us – like those who are covering the events or reading about them,” he says.<\/p>\n
“Our national ideal of who is vulnerable – and who holds victim status – are those who are white and female.”<\/p>\n
The perception of victimhood is partly a media creation.<\/p>\n
In truth, nearly half of those individuals who go missing in the US are not white – though one might not know that from the news coverage.<\/p>\n
Berry was abducted in April 2003 and DeJesus a year later. They were children when they vanished, and their families were desperate to find them.<\/p>\n
Yet the coverage of their abductions was dramatically different.<\/p>\n
In Cleveland, the newspaper stories were mainly about the white girl.<\/p>\n In the 10 years Berry was missing, the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper published 36 articles about her, according to a search of electronic news archive Lexis-Nexis.<\/p>\n During the nine-year period that DeJesus, who is Hispanic, was missing, the newspaper published 19 articles about her case.<\/p>\n The coverage of these two cases reflects an overall trend in the media.<\/p>\n According to\u00a0a 2010 academic study<\/a>, roughly 80% of the news coverage about missing children is devoted to victims who are not black, while only 20% is given to children who are black.<\/p>\n The breakdown in media coverage does not reflect reality. “We have a sort of racial hierarchy,” says McIlwain.<\/p>\n The coverage of violent crime and of people who have disappeared is biased and hurtful, says Natalie Wilson, co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation, which fights racial stereotypes in the media.<\/p>\n She first came across the stereotypes in crime reporting when she heard about a 24-year-old black woman, Tamika Huston, who went missing in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in 2004.<\/p>\n Journalists seemed indifferent.<\/p>\n “The family really struggled to get any coverage whatsoever,” says Wilson.<\/p>\n Wilson knows she cannot change the outcome of these cases. Many end in tragedy. More than a year after Huston’s disappearance, a former boyfriend pleaded guilty to her murder.<\/p>\n Yet at least the story has been reported – and her family knows what happened to her.<\/p>\n In some cases, it takes years<\/a>\u00a0to sort out the truth.<\/p>\n Some families who have lost a loved one only manage with help from an organisation like the Black and Missing Foundation or from a prominent activist.<\/p>\n Stephen Lawrence, 19, was stabbed by white thugs who used a racial slur in London in April 1993. His murder hardly caused a stir in the national media. After a fortnight, Stephen’s family held a press conference to complain not enough was being done by police to catch the killers. ThenNelson Mandela got involved<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Someone](\"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/67491000\/jpg\/_67491853_dealer.jpg\")
![\"Investigators](\"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/67491000\/jpg\/_67491854_6ba41f5f-5d15-4e49-81a6-785f01e2d6a2.jpg\")