The media does not provide the same type of coverage for lost and exploited BLACK and other minority children as often or as regularly as white children thus attributing to steadily high numbers of victimized children of color. SOURCE
Jada Justice (ironically)-a two year black toddler from Indiana has been missing for a week now, and no one outside of Indiana is aware of her disappearance unless one surfs the internet regularly.
“When White children go missing, we see extensive media coverage on them, even on the cable channels,” says Ronald Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association. “We don’t see that kind of response when it comes to African-American children.” Each year, there are 58,000 non-family child abductions and of those 42 percent are African-American, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Tom Morris, a senior correspondent at America’s Most Wanted, attributes the disparity in part to the lack of diversity in the newsroom, but he believes there are other factors at play besides race. “The differentiating factor is how aggressive the family is and how savvy they are about getting media attention,” Morris says. “Sometimes people don’t know how to go about drumming up media attention when a loved one goes missing. And in a lot of these cases, that’s what makes a difference.”
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Latest developments as of July 1, 2009: Jada’s cousin beat her to death during a heroine binge and disposed of her body in a tub of concrete dumped into a swamp so it could sink to the bottom. Before Jada’s tiny body was cemented in the tub of concrete, the cousin attempted to burn her body but an accomplice sustained burns to the face and arms and the attempt was abandoned. The wounds that the accomplice sustained were treated at a local hospital where he blamed the burns on a propane gas tank explosion.
The mother was known to leave Jada with this cousin for days at a time.