Looking at the headlines on this morning’s New York Times, one headline in particular jumped out at me. The one about the prosecutor in Boulder, Colorado deciding not to charge John Mark Karr in the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey. Later stories quote Mary Lacy, the Boulder County district attorney who decided to have Karr arrested and brought back to the U.S., taking responsibility for the matter.
“The decisions were mine. I should be held accountable,” Lacy told the press. Indeed, during the last two weeks, no evidence was found connecting Karr to the crime. And most or all of what Karr told the authorities was already a matter of public record.
From the start, the story seemed a bit problematic. Especially given that the guy’s ex-wife was swearing up and down that he spent Christmas with her in another part of the country. News stories gave the impression that there was no love lost between the two, so she certainly had no need to speak out and offer an alibi for Karr. For me, that lends more credibility to her statements than to his supposed admission.
But that’s not what’s really on my mind. What bothers me about the JonBenet Ramsey story (and the Natalee Holloway story, too) is that if they weren’t attractive white girls, their stories wouldn’t have had “legs.” How many times, in this country and elsewhere, do young children get murdered or kidnapped and it doesn’t make the national/international news? Unfortunately, more often than not.
Was it a bigger deal that JonBenet Ramsey was killed in December 1996 than, say, a black inner-city child killed by a stray bullet from a drive-by shooting? What if it had been an Asian girl, or Muslim girl who disappeared in Aruba? Would the story have gotten the full-time attention of media blow-hards like Nancy Grace? Somehow, I doubt it.
Ten years later and this one murder still makes the news. While the death of that young child is a tragedy on many levels, as is the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, our media and our society seem to ignore these kinds of stories unless the victims are young, white, attractive females. Especially ones from upper-class backgrounds like JonBenet Ramsey.
I know that the editors of the Times would say they’re just giving their readers the news they demand. In some quarters there may even be a cynical desire to publish sensational stories because sensational sells. But what does it say about us that we want tabloid news, even in the old gray lady of American journalism?
