Damn, even Hacktackular Howie Kurtz gets the whole "missing White Women" thing that the Cable News shows focus on.

I've fulminated on this subject before, but I've got to say, when you look at which missing-persons stories get heavily covered (female, white, usually middle class) and those that don't, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that selective news judgment is at work.

If there's a logical explanation for this, I've yet to hear it. And after JonBenet Ramsey, Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart, Jennifer Wilbanks, Natalee Holloway, etc., the pattern is unmistakable. In fact, I tried to look for stories about Holloway for the past month and Nexis interrupted my search, saying it would return more than 1,000 documents.

Here's the USA Today piece by Mark Memmott that got me thinking anew about this:

"Tamika Huston's family reported her missing a year ago this week.

"When police in Spartanburg, S.C., began investigating the 24-year-old woman's disappearance, her loved ones swung into action. They distributed fliers, held news conferences and set up a Web site. Huston's story became a cause célèbre in the local media.
...
"Rebkah Howard, Huston's aunt and a public relations professional in Miami, tried to get the national media interested in the case. 'I spent three weeks calling the cable networks, calling newspapers -- even yours,' Howard said this week.

"Not much happened.
...
"Tamika Huston is black."