Media Blackout For This Bride

[Sade]

FORGET MEDIA ATTENTION IF YOU'RE POOR, BLACK, UGLY OR OLD

By Cynthia Tucker
Sat May 7, 8:05 PM ET



A year ago, May 7, Stacy-Ann Sappleton took a taxi to Queens, N.Y., from LaGuardia, bound for the home of her future in-laws. She had flown in from Detroit to complete a few tasks for her planned September wedding.

She never made it. Her fiance, Damion Blair, his parents and Sappleton's mother spent a frantic weekend searching before they learned of her tragic demise.

Never heard of her? Neither has most of America.

Like runaway Georgia bride Jennifer Wilbanks, Sappleton was missing for three days. Like Wilbanks, Sappleton was young (26), middle-class and planning a wedding.

Unlike Wilbanks, Sappleton's disappearance didn't receive 24-hour cable news coverage, complete with breathless speculation by celebrity pundits, or banner newspaper headlines. Unlike Wilbanks, Sappleton was black.

The frenzy surrounding Wilbanks' disappearance once again highlights a peculiar feature of early 21st-century American culture: a fixation on pretty, young, middle-class white women. While tens of thousands of American adults disappear every year -- some eventually turn up, safe and sound; some are never heard from again; some are recovered as corpses -- only a small sliver get the Wilbanks/Laci Peterson/Lori Hacking treatment.


Read entire article - Very interesting

[JamieC]

The media can be a mother!!!. But then again I'm lookin' at whose reporting this stuff. White reporters!!! Then they want us to feel bad. :yr:

Tell ya what though..the next white chick that comes up missing well shame on her because there isn't a damn thing I can do for her, I'm not volunteering any of my time looking for her. Forget money cause I need every penny I work hard for, and I could care less. They are working a girls nerves here

[Nothing_Fails]

Jennifer Wilbanks ain't pretty. White yes. Pretty-> :yr:

[Baba Ahmed]

Maybe Cynthia Tucker can remain at home and write about local media biases.... including her own when writing on Black issues. She's about the "whitest" writing "Black" woman in this city.

While this article may impress folk who don't live in or around Atlanta, as an Editor of the only "major" newspaper in Atlanta, one wonders why she doesn't inform a nat'l audience that a local Police Chief Graham is working to re-open the forgotten Atlanta Missing and Murdered Children/adults cases, over 29 reported, during the late 1970s and early 1970s. An 18 year old brutha was railroaded and has been imprisoned for 23 years. Chief Graham said point blank that he never believed young Wayne Williams was guilty. The KKK was implicated; but no follow up reported. In fact during those times we got more updates from out of town reports than from the infamous AJC. Incidentally all of the young boys and men missing and or murdered were Black, from the ages of 9 to late twenties.

Cynthia Tucker is the same woman who went uninvited to Azania (South Afrika) preaching peace and integration. Winnie Mandela and others uninvited her butt back to Amerikkka. The AJC (Atlanta Journal/Constipation) has a long record of racist reporting about Black people. Its editorial writers have dogged down every Black politician in and around Atlanta, during the over 20 years we've lived here.

[DBlack]

It's pretty sickening, the state of our media. They are just as bad as the politicians; conduits for corruption, garbage and misinformation.

BTW, it was on CNN today that while the DA is still 'thinking' about whether to charge her, she has a record as a habitual shoplifter. Interesting...

[Samoon]

Bottom line? We have to take care of our OWN. We must begin to make the politicians that WE put in office "get up offa that thang" and help to ensure that people of color ARE "front page news" as opposed to being boxed in a small corner on the back pages. The way I view it, far too many politicians, including those of color are getting paid, talking loud and doing nothing. It is a vicious cycle and it should be stopped.

[jimihaze]

It is the media reporting on the things that don't matter is there job. media reporting has nothing to do about fair or right or wrong at that is the real crime.