Public Speaking Speech 3: Persuasive

Topic: Missing Minority Children

Introduction: Before I get started I have a couple questions to ask all of you.

1. How many of you are parents?

2. How many of you have young nieces or nephews?

3. How many of you have children, nieces or nephews are black, brown, yellow or red?

Okay I need you all to keep that in mind and close you eyes.

Picture that child, niece or nephew playing in the yard in front of your house or a family members house,

no one else is home, you’re there watching that child play from the front porch or maybe even the living

room. Suddenly your cell phone rings, it’s in your jacket hung up in another room. You run to get it, it’s

your significant other or maybe even a friend calling to ask for something not that important, maybe about

homework or they need a favor. Anyway you’re only gone for a few minutes, but when you get back to

watching your child, niece or nephew they’re gone. You can’t find them. Frantically you run through the

yard and the house shouting their name, your heart is racing, the adrenaline is flowing, where are they you

wonder? You scream louder becoming more frantic by the moment, you cry out to God as you run into the

house to call “someone”, who ever that maybe. But just as you’re reaching for the phone it rings again, this

time it’s your next door neighbor, telling you they had them and asking why no one was outside watching

your child, niece or nephew? Open your eyes.

Every 40 seconds in this nation a child is abducted, 9 out of 10 times a child is found without harm or

foul. But it’s that 1 out of 10 that all parents fear. Would if that child, niece or nephew was that 1 child and

you were trying to get the message out there that they were missing. What would you do, post messages on

the internet, hang up flyers or go to the media? I’d go to the media wouldn’t you? Well all of those people

in here with young family members who have a ethnic background that would be considered a minority I

have bad news for you. The media would not be much of a help for you. Why? That’s what I’m going to

talk to you about today. The fact that (THESIS STATEMENT)

Thesis: There seems to be a bias in the Media on the issue of covering missing minority children.

Preview: To explain this I’ll first present to you the criteria that a child must meet to be considered missing

or abducted. Second I’ll present to you some shocking statistics about missing and abducted children of

color and the media disparity between minority children and white children and third I’ll present to you

evidence from people within the media that undeniably points to there being a biasness within the media.

First Point: Criteria that must be met in order for a child to be considered Missing or Abducted.

Transition: Now before we get deeper into the issue of the medias biasness in coverage, I think we need to

look at the criteria which needs to be met in order for a child to be considered missing.

- First a person is considered a child if they are 17 years of age or younger.

- Second, according to a 2002 NISMART Report or (The National Incident Studies of Missing,

Abducted, Runaway or Throwaway Children) a child is considered missing when they either;

1. Runaway from home,

2. or Thrown Away by a parent,

3. they are a victim of Custodial Abduction or Kidnapping by way of a family member,

4. a child is thought to be missing but turns up with a minor excuse to why they were absent in this

case they can be injured or uninjured;

5. and finally a child is considered missing if they are taken against their will by someone outside

of their family or are lost and cannot be located.

- The last two criteria are the most commonly known; with the unauthorized abduction by family

members or people outside of the family being classified as Abduction.

- Again according to NISMART only 90% of all children missing fit the first three criteria, with

abduction cases making up the final 10%.

Transition: Keep that information in mind because it’ll be from these stats that I relate all of my statistical

information too.

Second Point: Statistics

- As of the conclusion of 2007, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,

there where 800,000 children that met the criteria to be considered missing or abducted.

- Out of those 800,000 children, nearly half are minority with One-Third of all Children missing being

black. That would mean that nearly 367,000 minority children were missing at the end of 2007.

- In 2002 NISMART reported that the number of missing minority children was about the same; I

bring that up because that year this nation became captivated with a young girl who was kidnapped from

her bedroom in the middle of the night.

- Everyone here remember Elizabeth Smart, the young woman from salt Lake City who was missing

for over a year and was miraculously found unharmed. Praise be given to all Mighty God that she was

returned safe. This is Alexis Patterson, she was 7 years in 2002 when she was kidnapped from her mothers

Salt Lake City Apartment a month and two days prior to Elizabeth Smart. According to JSOnline, in 2002 a

Nexus search of articles between the two girls found that 467 articles where written about them. 67 for

Alexis and 400 for Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s articles came from newspapers such as the Boston Globe, New

York Times and various international newspapers from a multitude of nations, while Alexis’ primarily

came from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Associated Press. There conclusions where clear, one

person received more coverage then the other - but was it because of race?

- A Scripps Howard study done in 2005 of 167 missing children cases reported by the AP from Jan 1,

2000 to Dec 31, 2004 along with 43 CNN reports on Missing Children from the same time, found that 67%

of the AP’s coverage and 76% of CNN’s coverage where dedicated to missing white children. Of the

remaining 33% of coverage, 17% of the AP and 13% of CNN’s coverage went to black children while 11%

of the AP’s coverage and 9% of CNN’s coverage went to Hispanic children. I think the only conclusion

that we can make is that there seems to be a biasness in the coverage, based on statistics.

Transition: However just like you I have a hard time believing this, after all a child is a child right? Or so I

thought.

Third Point: Evidence from people within the Media.

- In 2003 the Late Peter Jennings looked at this disparity while covering the Elizabeth Smart case.

While in Salt Lake City he saw Alexis’s poster and decided to interview her mother. During that interview

she told him that she had had little success with local media outlets in trying to get them to cover the story

of her missing child. Jennings sought to find out why; now I have to pretext the rest of this story by

admitting that I have not been able to locate this video but I desperately wanted to because I thought it

would be more powerful if you heard it in Jennings own voice, I couldn‘t even find a transcript. But I

remember what was said because it ripped out my heart and threw it to the ground. Jennings went to the

local NBC station and talked to a station Manager who declined to be on camera, but he told Jennings that

media outlets have to cover people who other people can identify with and a person with fair skin, blonde

hair and blew eyes is just more appealing to people then someone who is dark skinned and dark eyed. The

man then went on to say that it’s not right but that’s how it is.

- In 2005 a CBSnews.com article seemed to back up this claim when they quoted The Early Shows

Co-Anchor Hannah Storm as saying about the disparity among network coverage of missing minority

women that she believed that quote “networks have found a formula that worked for them and they tend to

be about young white attractive, middle to upper class women”. This particular article happened to be about

the lack of media coverage of a missing 24 year old black women. Age aside though, I think Hannah Storm

had a broader point which no one wants to make when they are talking about children. The media has their

formula and it doesn’t include many minorities.

- And as if that wasn’t bad enough, in that Scripps Howard Study I mentioned before the authors

summarized a seven-month investigative study in which they conducted where they found that dozens of

Police Departments and even the U.S justice Department violated Federal Laws Requiring that the nations

lost, runaway and kidnapped children must be accurately reported to state and federal authorities.

Understand this ladies and gentlemen, law enforcement bodies had failed to report information pertaining

to missing children.

Conclusion: I’d like to wrap this up by introducing you to Precious Doe. Home many of you have heard of

her? Her real name is ______________________, but in 2001 she was just an unknown body that had been

found decapitated in Kansas. Her case gained little attention by the national media outside of shows such as

Americas Most Wanted who made the capture of her killer one of their primary focuses. In 2003 during the

intense scrutiny of media coverage of minority children, Precious Doe started to get some air time. People

of color started calling from all across the country wondering if it was there child. Then finally after the

community had come together to give the little girl a funeral, a tip came in. A woman saw the story on TV

and thought she recognized the girl. The tip led to her parents who were ultimately charged with her

murder. The Media is powerful, we know this and that is why so many people seek to get their loved ones

on there. All I’d hope is that there is equal coverage for all children no matter their skin color.