Volume 29
I'm Trench Reynolds.
I blog about crime.
This is DBKP's This Week in Crime for August 17th-August 23rd, 2008.
For the past 8 months I've pimped out my sites here at DBKP. This week I'm doing something different, original content. What a concept, I know.
There's been a story in the news lately, you may have hard about it. A small child is missing. The child's parent is in jail on child endangerment charges and refuses to give police any information. There's evidence that the child may have been severely injured or even killed.
That sounds like the case of Caylee Anthony doesn't it? But it's not. This story is about 5-year-old Giovanni Gonzalez from Massachusetts.
Giovanni's father, Ernesto Gonzalez, had his son at his home for one of his visitations. The parents are currently involved in a custody dispute. When this past Monday came Giovanni had not been returned. Ernesto Gonzalez was arrested on child endangerment charges and is being held on $500,000 bond. He has a cut on his hand that he refuses to explain. Over this past weekend a bloody mop was found in Ernesto Gonzalez's home in Lynn, Massachusetts. Police are in the process of conducting door to door searches and have roadblocks set up all over the area.
Outside of mine and a few other blogs you won't hear about this story outside of the Boston area. No bounty hunters are involved and no L.A. lawyers are being retained as spokesmen. No armies of media are parked outside Gonzalez's house. No Nancy Grace or Greta Van Sustern doing shows about Giovanni Gonzalez. No psychics volunteering their assistance.
Why do you think that is? I think you know why but not for the reasons you think. It's because Giovanni Gonzalez and his parents are Hispanic. That's all there is to it. However I don't think the media outlets are racist. For the media it's all about numbers. They're ruled by ratings or readership. It's a twisted game of supply and demand. It's the American viewers and readers that are racist. They salivate over every minute detail that comes out of the Caylee Anthony story yet when a Hispanic boy befalls a similar fate no one outside of the area even bats an eyelash.
I used to think this wasn't true but I was just kidding myself about it. Think about it, since the dawn of 24-hour news can you name a crime story that held the nation's attention where the victim wasn't white? I used to also think it was about social class and not color but Casey Anthony doesn't seem to be financially successful so it isn't that either.
The media keeps producing these circuses because we demand them. If we stop watching and reading about them maybe then more missing children can receive the media attention they deserve. In reality that's nothing more than a pipe dream and the media will continue business as usual.
More information on the Giovanni Gonzalez story can be found here.
by Trench Reynolds