“Newsworthy” Victims?

More than 500 Aboriginal women have gone missing or been murdered in Canada since the 1980s yet press attention to this violence is relatively minimal. This paper compares local press coverage of matched cases: three missing/murdered Aboriginal women from Saskatchewan and three missing/murdered White women from Ontario. Quantitative and qualitative content analyses indicate stark disparities in the amount and content of coverage between groups. The Aboriginal women received three and a half times less coverage; their articles were shorter and less likely to appear on the front page. Depictions of the Aboriginal women were also more detached in tone and scant in detail in contrast to the more intimate portraits of the White women. Drawing on feminist media studies and theories of intersectionality, this paper argues that the simultaneous devaluation of Aboriginal womanhood and idealization of middle-class White womanhood contributes to broader systemic inequalities which re/produce racism, sexism, classism, and colonialism. This paper raises concerns about the broader implications of the relative invisibility of missing/murdered Aboriginal women in the press, and their symbolic annihilation from the Canadian social landscape. Keywords: missing and murdered womennewsworthinesslocal press coverageracial biasAboriginal womenhierarchy of victims Notes 1. The terms Aboriginal, Native, First Nations, and Indigenous are used interchangeably. These are umbrella terms used to describe various First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities and Nations in Canada. 2. Missing refers to cases where women have disappeared under suspicious circumstances, with a strong likelihood that they may have been killed. Murdered refers to cases where missing women are found to be/identified as victims of homicide. 3. During the time period explored for this research, all of the White women were found to be victims of homicide and White male perpetrators were criminally charged. By contrast, only Melanie Geddes was identified as murdered during this time. At the time of this article's publication, her perpetrator(s) remain at large. It was not until 2008 that evidence led police to the discovery of both Amber Redman and Daleen Bosse's remains. In early 2009, an Aboriginal man pled guilty to the second-degree murder of Amber Redman. A White man awaits trial in the murder of Daleen Bosse. 4. The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix was selected for Daleen Bosse and the Regina Leader-Post was selected for Amber Redman and Melanie Geddes. The Toronto Star was selected for Alicia Ross's case while the Ottawa Citizen was selected for its local coverage of Ardeth Wood and Jennifer Teague. 5. This analysis draws on the sixty articles selected for qualitative/interpretive analysis. 6. Critics might argue that these findings are problematic given that the White women were from Ontario while the Aboriginal women were from Saskatchewan. Granted, Ontario is the most populous Canadian province and closer to the major national media markets influencing the amount of national media coverage for the White women. However, in selecting the most widely read local newspaper corresponding with the cities where the women disappeared/were murdered this largely resolves the problems of potential geographic and market differences between the provinces. Even though both Saskatchewan newspapers are smaller than the Ontario newspapers, they also have correspondingly less local news to cover, and one could reasonably expect that such a case would receive at least as much coverage in a Saskatchewan newspaper as an Ontario newspaper. In addition, the qualitative component of this research provides strong support that geographical differences do not account for/explain the stark disparities found along several other dimensions of coverage.