Best-selling author Stephen King agrees with his colleague Don Winslow, who said the news coverage given to missing Long Island native Gabby Petito over the past week was different from the attention usually given to missing women of color.
Stephen King had never seen a missing black woman receive the coverage that Gabby Petito received
“I’ve never seen the disappearance of a young black woman covered like the disappearance of #gabbypetitio,” he tweeted on Sunday. “Not once. That’s terribly wrong.”
Absolutely correct. https://t.co/szHsJPefTa
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) September 20, 2021
Petito, a 22-year-old white woman who documented her travels on social media, took a cross-country road trip with her boyfriend Brian Landrie in July. She returned home to Florida alone in the body on Sept. 1. Petito was found in a Wyoming national park on Sunday. Landrie has since disappeared.
King, whose horror masterpieces include “The Shining” and “The Dead Zone,” concurred with Winslow’s observation.
Winslow’s Twitter account was filled with photos of missing women of color and lively conversations about dozens of missing Native American women.
She retweeted those messages, further illustrating her point. Winslow, who tweeted her message Sunday, went on to say that anyone who believes her comments came too soon after Petito’s tragic death is mistaken.
The Grio cited reports in May that 64,000 black women are missing in the U.S. The Black and Missing Foundation claimed Tuesday that 40% of missing persons are people of color, which they say is not reflected in media coverage.
Activist and writer Shaun King wrote about the lack of attention to missing black girls and women for the Daily News in 2017. Among the cases he mentioned was that of Relisha Rudd, who disappeared from a homeless shelter in Washington DC in 2014.
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