New Media Guide Launched To Help Newsrooms Properly Cover Stories Of Missing Black People

A new media guide has been launched to create standards and improve equity in the way that missing person cases are covered in the news. The guide seeks to address biases in coverage that lead to missing Black people receiving significantly less attention than their white counterparts. The guide represents part of a larger set of efforts to bring greater attention to the cases of missing Black people in the United States.

New guide to establish standards, fight bias in missing person reporting

The Black and Missing Foundation, Inc. and the Washington Association of Black Journalists issued a news release Tuesday announcing the launch of The Media Guide for Reporting on Missing Persons. The guide is described in the news release as “a comprehensive resource designed to address long-standing disparities in media coverage of missing persons cases, especially those involving people of color.” The publication comes after a year of collaborative work between the two organizations. The guide is described as a practical resource for newsrooms and reporters to help set standards and remove bias concerning coverage of missing persons.

Per the news release, BAMFI co-founder Natalie Wilson addressed a lack of standards in how missing persons are covered by news agencies and said the guide is crucial “to ensure that media coverage of missing persons is fair and consistent and ensures that missing persons cases receive the attention they deserve.”

WABJ President Phil Lewis said, “For too long, newsrooms across the country have overlooked the stories of missing persons of color,” according to the news release. He continued, “We hope that this media guide will help empower journalists and newsroom leaders to cover these stories accurately and appropriately.”

News agencies are invited to request copies of the guide, and BAMFI and WABJ are offering to send personnel to journalism classes and student news organizations to teach principles from the guide.

As people of color disproportionately go missing, new efforts fight disparities in response

According to the Black and Missing Foundation, over 563,000 people were reported missing in the United States in 2023. Forty percent of those were people of color, including over 162,000 children of color. Despite the prevalence of missing persons cases, federal standards are lacking for how to record data and investigate such cases. When it comes to missing Black people, there is often a lack of news coverage when compared to cases involving white people.

In recent years, various efforts have been launched to address these disparities. As Blavity reported, California enacted an Ebony Alert system in 2023, modeled after the Amber Alert System for missing children but focused on Black women and children. The National Newspaper Publishers Association recently unveiled its Missing & Black 2025 campaign, which “plans to harness digital storytelling, social media outreach and community partnerships to challenge implicit biases and elevate the urgency surrounding missing Black individuals.” The campaign also seeks to mobilize Black media personalities to publicize specific cases of missing Black people.

Now, the Media Guide for Reporting on Missing Persons is available as one more tool to ensure that missing people of color get the attention that their cases need and that other cases receive. With Black people and other minority populations disproportionately represented among the missing, all these resources are crucial to solve more of these cases.