WASHINGTON: An avalanche of online coverage and high-profile television broadcasts: the death of young adventurer Gabby petito sparked immense interest in the US and around the world – and sparked a debate over the disproportionate attention given to missing white women.
The recent discovery of the body of a 22-year-old travel blogger in Wyoming and the decision on Tuesday to treat her death as a homicide made headlines far and wide.
with her boyfriend Brian Laundry, Petito embarks on a cross-country camper van tour to explore the majestic landscape of the American West.
But Laundry returned to Florida alone — 10 days before Petito’s family reported her missing — and has been missing ever since. On Thursday, the FBI issued a warrant for Laundry’s arrest.
Tragedy like this is tragically common in a country where hundreds of thousands of people go missing every year. And yet Petito’s fortune garnered a staggering amount of interest.
“At first I was only interested because it was a very captivating story. It was like ‘Why did he come back? Why didn’t she come back?’ Paris Campbell, 28, a comedian and writer in New York, explained.
Under his pseudonym “StopitParis”, Campbell has posted about 30 videos on the topic to his 265,000 followers on TikTok.
“It is certainly a very concerning situation,” she told AFP.
In images shared by the couple on social media, they are all smiles – barefoot in a canyon or surveying the ocher cliffs of state and national parks.
According to Campbell, the connection between how people “romanticized” Pettito’s roadtripping life and the “tragedy” of what happened added to the fascination.
Campbell said she has grown to more than 100,000 followers since she began reporting the case last week. As of Thursday, the hashtag #GabbyPetito had accumulated over 915 million views on TikTok.
Campbell devotes several hours every day to making her videos, adding that it was a comment from a Petito cousin urging her to continue her work, which served as inspiration.
“It felt like it was the right thing to do,” she said.
In a flood of sometimes fictitious postings about the case, some videos have sparked the investigation.
A couple reported on YouTube that they saw Petito and Laundry’s white van in Grand Teton National Park. According to US media, police took the claim seriously and Petito’s body was found near the alleged location of the van.
“Social media is like an AMBER (child abduction) alert in this case, just more effective,” said Michael Alcazar, a retired New York Police detective and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“You have… the eyes of millions,” he said, raising the chances of the matter being resolved.
Such extraordinary vigilance is rarely given to black or other minority women who go missing.
The disappearances of young white women—particularly those who are relatively wealthy and fit traditional “attractiveness” stereotypes—get far more media coverage than their minority counterparts, according to lawyer and criminologist Zack Somers, who ” missing”. White woman syndrome.”
Somers estimates that fifty percent of the articles she read focused on white women, a category that accounts for only 30 percent of the missing.
Somers said that the blonde and “fragile” Petito, in the eyes of some, became a “maiden in distress” in need of saving, a narrative that permeates American culture, Somers said.
According to Somers, other factors leading to the explosion of interest include the abundance of accessible content on the couple’s social media accounts and police bodycam footage of an August police encounter in which the couple is seen arguing.
According to Sommers, Laundry’s questionable behavior, which declined to be interviewed by investigators and then went off the radar, propelled him into the role of the “natural prime suspect” to audiences hanging on at every turn and turn of the case.
And because American society has “strong ties to people of color and criminal acts, it may not be seen as remarkable or newsworthy when a black person goes missing,” he said.
Martin Reynolds of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education addressed the disparity, saying “the people who are in the decision-making role about the news lack diversity.”
Aware of such bias, TikTok user Campbell and others are now promoting various missing persons cases, including Asian woman Lauren Cho and African-American Jelani Day.
Day’s body has only recently been identified, LaSalle, Illinois officials said Thursday, although the cause of death remained unknown.
“It’s great” that Campbell is helping, Reynolds said, but stressed that the onus to get the word out lies with journalists who “must make sure to be justified in their approach to coverage.”
The recent discovery of the body of a 22-year-old travel blogger in Wyoming and the decision on Tuesday to treat her death as a homicide made headlines far and wide.
with her boyfriend Brian Laundry, Petito embarks on a cross-country camper van tour to explore the majestic landscape of the American West.
But Laundry returned to Florida alone — 10 days before Petito’s family reported her missing — and has been missing ever since. On Thursday, the FBI issued a warrant for Laundry’s arrest.
Tragedy like this is tragically common in a country where hundreds of thousands of people go missing every year. And yet Petito’s fortune garnered a staggering amount of interest.
“At first I was only interested because it was a very captivating story. It was like ‘Why did he come back? Why didn’t she come back?’ Paris Campbell, 28, a comedian and writer in New York, explained.
Under his pseudonym “StopitParis”, Campbell has posted about 30 videos on the topic to his 265,000 followers on TikTok.
“It is certainly a very concerning situation,” she told AFP.
In images shared by the couple on social media, they are all smiles – barefoot in a canyon or surveying the ocher cliffs of state and national parks.
According to Campbell, the connection between how people “romanticized” Pettito’s roadtripping life and the “tragedy” of what happened added to the fascination.
Campbell said she has grown to more than 100,000 followers since she began reporting the case last week. As of Thursday, the hashtag #GabbyPetito had accumulated over 915 million views on TikTok.
Campbell devotes several hours every day to making her videos, adding that it was a comment from a Petito cousin urging her to continue her work, which served as inspiration.
“It felt like it was the right thing to do,” she said.
In a flood of sometimes fictitious postings about the case, some videos have sparked the investigation.
A couple reported on YouTube that they saw Petito and Laundry’s white van in Grand Teton National Park. According to US media, police took the claim seriously and Petito’s body was found near the alleged location of the van.
“Social media is like an AMBER (child abduction) alert in this case, just more effective,” said Michael Alcazar, a retired New York Police detective and professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
“You have… the eyes of millions,” he said, raising the chances of the matter being resolved.
Such extraordinary vigilance is rarely given to black or other minority women who go missing.
The disappearances of young white women—particularly those who are relatively wealthy and fit traditional “attractiveness” stereotypes—get far more media coverage than their minority counterparts, according to lawyer and criminologist Zack Somers, who ” missing”. White woman syndrome.”
Somers estimates that fifty percent of the articles she read focused on white women, a category that accounts for only 30 percent of the missing.
Somers said that the blonde and “fragile” Petito, in the eyes of some, became a “maiden in distress” in need of saving, a narrative that permeates American culture, Somers said.
According to Somers, other factors leading to the explosion of interest include the abundance of accessible content on the couple’s social media accounts and police bodycam footage of an August police encounter in which the couple is seen arguing.
According to Sommers, Laundry’s questionable behavior, which declined to be interviewed by investigators and then went off the radar, propelled him into the role of the “natural prime suspect” to audiences hanging on at every turn and turn of the case.
And because American society has “strong ties to people of color and criminal acts, it may not be seen as remarkable or newsworthy when a black person goes missing,” he said.
Martin Reynolds of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education addressed the disparity, saying “the people who are in the decision-making role about the news lack diversity.”
Aware of such bias, TikTok user Campbell and others are now promoting various missing persons cases, including Asian woman Lauren Cho and African-American Jelani Day.
Day’s body has only recently been identified, LaSalle, Illinois officials said Thursday, although the cause of death remained unknown.
“It’s great” that Campbell is helping, Reynolds said, but stressed that the onus to get the word out lies with journalists who “must make sure to be justified in their approach to coverage.”
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