Veteran journalist and producer Soledad O’Brien told SiriusXM host Dean Obeidallah that race is “obviously” a factor in the way the media treats Black people who go missing.

On Friday’s edition of The Dean Obeidallah Show, the host talked with Ms. O’Brien, who is the co-producer of the new HBO docu-series Black and Missing. Obeidallah asked O’Brien what inspired the series.

I think for me is how do you tell the story of the women who run the “Black and Missing” foundation. How do you think about elevating a lot of these stories and digging into why, why are the stories about missing Black women and Black people generally, why are they not told why are they not shared, why are they not so interesting to the media? And why is law enforcement seeming to be unwilling to really chase after these stories?

So for all those reasons for a long time I’ve been interested, but when we finally were able to get Derrica and Natalie Wilson of the Black and Missing Foundation to take part in the doc, then it all came together. But that was about three years ago a lot of people have said to me oh with the Gabby Petito story you know good timing.

And I think “Oh my goodness no,” I mean there’s so many versions of this story you could just do it over and over and over again, unfortunately. We know there’s a correlation–or the women from black and missing will tell you–there’s a correlation with domestic violence so there’s been a spike in the pandemic and also we know that sex trafficking, lot of times kids are considered to be runaways are actually being sex trafficked. And so I think that there is a large number, and often it is also because people are not really searching for them and don’t prioritize looking for them.

If you look at the coverage in fact in the documentary as you saw, we look at the story of a young [Black] woman right goes missing right just before Natalee Holloway goes missing and you can’t even compare the coverage of those two cases. Because one young woman–the black woman–gets zero coverage, none, literally none. Her relatives are well connected in the media they know how to navigate a system they just cannot get anyone to care. And then Natalee Holloway goes missing and you know there’s tons of coverage. And not just coverage, there are Americans who are literally getting on planes to go to Aruba to search for her.

So I think the question becomes why is the “missing white woman syndrome” as Gwen Ifill used to put it you know so contagious. Why is it so inspiring for people to tell these stories and then you know often others just get missed altogether? And I think a lot of that has to do with bias. I think that has to do with who the media thinks is attractive and important and interesting. And so you know obviously race is a factor.

Watch above via SiriusXM.

The post Soledad O’Brien Decries Treatment of Missing Black Women and Children: ‘Why Are They Not So Interesting To The Media?’ first appeared on Mediaite.

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