MSNBC “ReidOut” host Joy Reid, arguably the cable news queen of wacko rants and insane conspiracy theories, actually had one of the saner segments in the history of her time on television Monday night. She highlighted an issue that doesn’t get much attention in mainstream media, including on her network.
Reid began the segment by talking about the case of Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old New York woman who went missing for days. Petito, sadly, was confirmed dead on Tuesday after the Teton County coroner’s office conducted an autopsy on remains found in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming Sunday that matched Petito’s description. According to the autopsy results, her death was a homicide.
Florida police and the FBI are searching for Petito’s fiancé, 23-year-old Brian Laundrie, who resides in the state. Laundrie and Petito had been on a road trip for several weeks when her family reported her missing on September 11th, believing text messages sent from her phone to them in the two weeks prior weren’t really from her.
On her show, Reid took a moment to acknowledge the pain Petito’s family was going through, saying they “deserved answers and justice” before pivoting to speculating why Petito’s case had gotten so much national media attention:
If you have been watching the news for the past few days or on Twitter or TikTok, you`re probably familiar with the name Gabby Petito, the 22-year-old aspiring social media influencer who was reported missing after her fiance returned from their van life excursion without her.[…]Now, it goes without saying that no family should ever have to endure that kind of pain. And the Petito family certainly deserve answers and justice. But the way this story has captivated the nation has many wondering, why not the same media attention when people of color go missing?Well, the answer actually has a name, missing white woman syndrome, the term coined by the late and great Gwen Ifill to describe the media and public fascination with missing white women, like Laci Peterson or Natalee Holloway, while ignoring cases involving missing people of color.
Reid then brought Black and Missing Foundation CEO/co-founder Derrica Wilson and Not Our Native Daughters founder Lynnette Grey Bull to discuss their organizations and what they do to highlight the stories of missing black and indigenous persons.
Watch:
“Missing White Woman Syndrome” trended on Twitter after Reid’s segment:
While even conservatives were inclined to concede that Reid had a point, the issue many took with her rant is that she conveniently overlooked the fact that not only is her network guilty of not giving much attention to black missing persons cases, but she is, too.
For years, Reid’s been given an enormous platform to raise awareness of these types of issues, but do we see nightly segments or at least once a week segments from her bringing attention to any specific cases of black people who have gone missing? No. Because apparently, Reid would rather pick fights with pop singers and allege that conservatives “love COVID so much you want it to spread into schools, in the office, in the Walmart, on the cruise ships, and at the club.”
“[W]here people wanted to recall [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom is where’s the most COVID,” Reid said last week. “So, they’re like, ‘give us more. Inject it in us. Is there a way we can drink it in a Kool-Aid cup? Because we want it. And we want it bad and we want this man to get out of our way and we want our COVID.’ It’s insane.”
Another area where Reid and the media fall way short on reporting about black victims of crime is in cases like the one below, and cases where black children are senselessly murdered in drive-by shootings almost every week in Democrat-run cities like Chicago:
Memo to Joy Reid: You are not the heroine here. You have been and continue to be part of the problem. Maybe that will change after this week, but I kinda doubt it.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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