2008 Woodie Awards
Letter: Williams case goes unnoticed by media
Issue date: 11/29/07 Section: Editorial/Opinion
- Page 1 of 2 next >
11/29/07 - To the Cigar,
A few weeks ago, my group members and I were assigned a project in which we had to address an issue that had either been censored or suppressed in the mainstream media and prove it to our class in a presentation.
One would think this would be a difficult task to accomplish considering that we live in a country of "free press," however, I was outraged to discover a case in which a 20-year-old African American woman named Megan Williams had been kidnapped, raped and sadistically tortured in West Virginia just a few months ago.
Although I consider myself up to date on current events, I could vaguely recall a group on Facebook.com in support for this young woman and could not remember viewing any news broadcasts or articles in major publications.
Upon learning more about the Williams case, I was outraged further by the fact that although all six of the suspects were white, the case was not being pursued as a hate crime, because, according to CBS News (Nov. 12, 2007) authorities decided, "not to pursue hate crime charges in the kidnapping and weeklong torture of a black woman, instead going after the suspects, who are white, on state charges that carry stiffer penalties."
Initially, when my group started researching the coverage of the case, we wanted to see if our general awareness was relative to that of the public's, therefore, we conducted a brief survey of 100 people.
Of the people surveyed, 65 watched the news and of that 65, only a mere 17 had heard of the Williams case with the majority of those having heard it from Facebook.com.
How exactly is it that a story that made national news is not easily recalled by the American public?
Upon further investigation, we discovered that of 11 publications on LexisNexis.com, which mentioned the case, only four were from major American publications and it seemed as though the articles were not only brief in comparison to other stories about O.J. Simpson's legal battles, but they were never on the front page news.
A few weeks ago, my group members and I were assigned a project in which we had to address an issue that had either been censored or suppressed in the mainstream media and prove it to our class in a presentation.
One would think this would be a difficult task to accomplish considering that we live in a country of "free press," however, I was outraged to discover a case in which a 20-year-old African American woman named Megan Williams had been kidnapped, raped and sadistically tortured in West Virginia just a few months ago.
Although I consider myself up to date on current events, I could vaguely recall a group on Facebook.com in support for this young woman and could not remember viewing any news broadcasts or articles in major publications.
Upon learning more about the Williams case, I was outraged further by the fact that although all six of the suspects were white, the case was not being pursued as a hate crime, because, according to CBS News (Nov. 12, 2007) authorities decided, "not to pursue hate crime charges in the kidnapping and weeklong torture of a black woman, instead going after the suspects, who are white, on state charges that carry stiffer penalties."
Initially, when my group started researching the coverage of the case, we wanted to see if our general awareness was relative to that of the public's, therefore, we conducted a brief survey of 100 people.
Of the people surveyed, 65 watched the news and of that 65, only a mere 17 had heard of the Williams case with the majority of those having heard it from Facebook.com.
How exactly is it that a story that made national news is not easily recalled by the American public?
Upon further investigation, we discovered that of 11 publications on LexisNexis.com, which mentioned the case, only four were from major American publications and it seemed as though the articles were not only brief in comparison to other stories about O.J. Simpson's legal battles, but they were never on the front page news.