Brisenia Flores

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March 15, 2012 | 12:49 PM | By

When people of color go missing

Photo by Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

The gist of a report released yesterday regarding how authorities handled the case of Mitrice Richardson, a young woman found dead almost two years ago in a Malibu canyon, dealt with poor communication between agencies after her body was found, not with how her disappearance was handled or the decisions that led up to it.

But because it’s part of a larger puzzle, her case is worth bringing up again for other reasons. Richardson, who was black, was 24 years old when she was released from the Malibu-Lost Hills station of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department after midnight without her purse or a cell phone. Her car had been towed after Richardson, a former beauty queen and college graduate who struggled with mental illness, was arrested for not paying her bill at a Malibu restaurant.

In the criticism since lobbed at the Sheriff’s Department, the role of race in how her case was handled has been more than implied. Richardson’s parents filed suit for wrongful death, charging that authorities should never have released her how they did, in the middle of the night in unfamiliar surroundings with no transportation or way of contacting anyone for help.

As for media coverage, Richardson’s case eventually made major headlines, but not initially, when the search for her began. It may not have made a difference. But there is a stark gap in coverage of missing persons, children and adults, that is tied to race and ethnicity. Last month the Maynard Institute, which promotes diversity in journalism, published a piece explaining – painfully – why people of color are not a media priority:

A 2005 study by Scripps Howard News Service found that although half of missing children are white, they were subjects of more than two-thirds of reports on the Associated Press national news wire during the last five years and for three-fourths of missing-children coverage on CNN.

The data point to a need for the media to be colorblind on this topic. A victim’s race should not impact coverage, especially when media attention can help bring a child home or determine whether a crime has been committed. Experts cite a need for the media to provide a civic responsibility to cover all missing persons cases.

“Historically, the perfect victim is a young female who is Caucasian and considered cute as a button and if there’s a sketchy family history, it feeds into the formula,” says Gaetane Borders, president of Peas In Their Pods, a nonprofit in Snellville, Ga., that raises awareness about missing children of color.

The piece compares two recent similar cases involving missing children: that of Jahessye Shockley, a five-year-old black Arizona girl who went missing last October, and Caylee Anthony, a two-year-old white Florida girl whose mother was tried for her death and acquitted last year.

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FILED UNDER: Brisenia Flores, Casey Anthony, Caylee Anthony, Find Our Missing, Marchella Pierce, Missing people of color, Mitrice Richardson, NCMEC
July 7, 2011 | 11:08 AM | By

Why you’ve heard of Caylee, but not Brisenia or Marchella

Pool photo/Getty Images News

Casey Anthony, the mother of Caylee Anthony, reacts to being found not guilty on murder charges at the Orange County Courthouse in Orlando, Fla. on July 5, 2011

The trial involving Casey Anthony, recently acquitted of murder charges in the 2008 death of her toddler daughter Caylee Anthony by a Florida jury, has made national headlines for months. The story has been a top draw on cable news shows, with CNN’s Nancy Grace taping live from the center of the action in Orlando.

Yet similarly tragic criminal cases involving children – the horrific abuse and death of 4-year-old Marchella Pierce in New York, the murder of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father in Arizona during a home invasion by border vigilantes – have received scant coverage in comparison.

The stories of these three children are equally sad, how they died equally gut-wrenching. One difference is that Caylee was white, Marchella was black, and Brisenia was Mexican American.

Does race and ethnicity factor into how these cases are reported? Kelly McBride, a senior faculty member with The Poynter Institute and one of the nation’s leading experts on media ethics, addresses this and other questions about the coverage disparity and what can be done about it:

M-A: Why do you think these tragic cases involving white children get much more ink? Is there an “otherness” factor in the news decisions that are made, i.e. that perhaps because the family is of color, the audience may not be able to identify as well?

McBride: Some of it has to do with assumptions that we make in the media about what’s “normal” and what’s “compelling.” One of the things driving the Casey Anthony saga is the window into a dysfunctional family. So if we’re fascinated by this family, then we must think they are unusual. And race plays into that.

It’s possible that the people making decisions in newsrooms have a default assumption about what’s normal (functional) and not normal (dysfunctional) for white families. And it’s possible that they have a default assumption about families of color that are the opposite of what they assume for white families. Maybe some of that is true or all of it is true. But it plays into how editors make news judgments.

M-A: Is there an unspoken sense, however uncomfortable this is, that perhaps because the family of an exploited or murdered child is of color, that “these things happen” in these communities?

McBride: Maybe. And maybe it’s even worse than that. Maybe people of color are so much the other, that those in power just don’t think of them at all.

M-A: Particularly in the case of Brisenia Flores, why do you think there wasn’t a bigger outrage factor, especially given the hate implications? The story received little coverage until the trials this year, though the murders occurred two years ago.

McBride: Yes, I’m appalled that that story didn’t get more attention. Some of this is predicated on local newspaper coverage. National outlets find out about stories because local newspapers do stories. The more stories that appear in a local publication, the more likely a national outlet is to pick up on them. The more the cops play up a story to the press, the more stories there will be.

In Florida, there are lots of newspapers and lots of cops too because it’s a quite crowded state. So crime gets a lot of attention. In Arizona, there are fewer people and an even less competitive press environment.

M-A: The coverage disparity isn’t unique to cases involving children. The same questions have come up regarding stories of missing or murdered adults, particularly young women like Mitrice Richardson, whose disappearance received only minor coverage at first. What should be done about this? If an adjustment in the newsroom needs to occur, what is it?

McBride: With adult victims, the assumptions are even worse.

It depends on what kind of newsroom it is. This is an easier problem to solve on a local level. Journalists simply need to make sure they are examining all murders and missing people and giving them similar coverage. (That’s actually really hard to do, but it’s easier than the national solution.) And because local journalists are loyal to their local community, they are generally motivated to serve that audience well.

On a national level, journalists are not accountable in the same way. So there’s less motivation to change the dynamics that lead to tilted coverage. It would take a significant act of leadership at a place like CNN or Fox to break out of this cycle. And I’m not sure there’s enough accountability to make that happen.

FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, Brisenia Flores, Casey Anthony, Caylee Anthony, Kelly McBride, Marchella Pierce, The Poynter Institute
February 23, 2011 | 11:44 AM | By

‘I’m torn:’ A death penalty opponent reacts to the sentencing of Brisenia Flores’ convicted killer

Screen shot from Presente.org

As Arizona state senators yesterday prepared to hear some of the strictest anti-illegal immigration legislation to come out of the state since SB 1070, a convicted murderer whose crime was rooted in one of the darker corners of the immigration debate was sentenced to death in Tucson.

Shawna Forde, a radical anti-illegal immigration activist who led a Minuteman splinter group, has joined two other women on Arizona’s death row; she was convicted last week in the brutal 2009 home invasion murder of 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her father, Raul, in the Arizona border town of Arivaca.

Forde was also convicted of robbery, the believed motive, and was not convicted of a hate crime. But it has been difficult to separate the crime from the beliefs she espoused. Among the reactions today is this post on Slate by blogger Amanda Marcotte:

Few news items have provoked mixed feelings as strongly in me as learning that Shawna Forde was sentenced to death yesterday, after being convicted of a hate crime that’s up there with the dragging death of James Byrd in Jasper and the killing of Matthew Shepard, though Forde’s crime has, for some hard to discern reason, not received nearly the same levels of attention. I’m torn, because I oppose the death penalty broadly, but I also believe that hate crimes and domestic terrorism are ideal crimes for maximum sentences that send the message to future would-be terrorists that they do not have community support.

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FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, Brisenia Flores, SB 1070, Shawna Forde
February 22, 2011 | 1:31 PM | By

What really led to Brisenia Flores’ murder?

Since the conviction last week of Shawna Forde for murder in the 2009 home invasion slaying of a Latino father and his 9-year-old daughter in rural Arivaca, Arizona, there have been sighs of relief among those who had called for justice, but also bitter questions about how the murder and trial were covered by media, in particular the degree of attention paid to Forde’s radical nativism.

Forde, the ringleader of a trio accused of carrying out the killings, was also the leader of a Minuteman splinter group known as Minuteman American Defense, or MAD. She had been pushed out of the more mainstream Minuteman Civil Defense Corps for what members described to CNN as “unstable behavior.”

Forde was not convicted of a hate crime. The motive for the home invasion that left Brisenia Flores and her father Raul dead was ostensibly robbery, for which Forde was also convicted. But there has been much criticism that mainstream media not only arrived late to the story, but in its coverage failed to sufficiently address the beliefs espoused by Forde as relevant to the crime.

Several blogs have taken up the latter conversation in recent days, demanding deeper discussion of the implications of a crime in which the victims were Latino, the murderer a militant anti-illegal immigration activist. From a post yesterday from David Neiwert in Crooks and Liars:

When a sweet, innocent life is cut short like this — especially by an act as monstrous as this one — it always horrifies us, just as the case of another Arizona 9-year-old slain by a madman, Christina Green, has resonated deeply with the public. And so often in such cases, the monstrousness and the tragedy simply overwhelm us, leaving us to throw up our hands and decide that it’s beyond our understanding, that there’s no explaining such events.

But there’s no such mystery about what killed Brisenia. We know. We can see it clearly. And we need to be talking about it.

The people who broke into her home late at night while she was sleeping with her new puppy on the living-room couch and cold-bloodedly shot her in the face while she pleaded for her life were people who did not see her, or her father or mother, as human beings. They were people who had become so accustomed to dehumanizing Latinos that they didn’t care about the devastation they brought to Arivaca and the lives of this family. They were so consumed by hate that they had no humanity left themselves.

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FILED UNDER: Politics/Justice, Arivaca murders, Brisenia Flores, Minuteman American Defense, Shawna Forde