the smedley log - suburban scrawl

Have you seen Latoyia Figueroa?

Latoyia Figueroa, a pregnant Philadelphia woman with a 7-year-old daughter at home, has been missing for over a week now. Sadly, her story apparently doesn’t have the hook to draw national media attention, so Philly area bloggers have been called upon to bring the story as much attention as possible. The call came from Richard at All Spin Zone, who also suggests writing an email to CNN’s Nancy Grace (she who has been giving exhaustive coverage to the Natalee Holloway story on her nightly show).

If you’re a Philly area blogger, please join the effort to give Latoyia as much face time as possible. Even sites with limited readership can make a difference just by getting her face seen by one or two more people who might have an idea how to find her. Thank you.

UPDATE: CNN.com finally has a story on Latoyia. Let’s hope other media pick up on it as well.

I’m trying to get around to all the blogs that have picked up this story tonight and express my appreciation. There’s a real blogswarm going (both left and right, I think…) and I’m hopeful that the story will get picked up by the corporate media tomorrow.

My hope is to see Latoyia right next to Natalee on both Nancy Grace and the Abram’s Report tomorrow night. Thanks for your help!!

Howard, thanks for stirring this one up along with Richard. Stuff’s happening…and the power of blogs for good shows here.

All it took for me was to become aware of the situation, and I guess that’s what this is really about.

How do you set a wide net for a missing person if nobody knows about it? I think it’s great what you’ve started doing here Richard, and Frank, I absolutely agree that this is just one example of what blogs can do to have a positive effect.

Hopefully it all works.

[…] , whose sincere passion helped make this happen, with the help of bloggers such as Duncan, Howard, Philly Future, Susie, Jane, Albert, Frank, ol’ cranky, and many, many mor […]

I realize that the Holloway case is all over the news … but in fairness it’s the family that is keeping the story alive! It’s not prejudice. Beth and her family are giving interviews. They have had bracelets and prayer cards made. Beth and family members are combing Aruba going door-to-door asking questions, private investigators were hired. Aruba would like nothing better than to sweep this under the rug, if no evidence is found come September 4th, that Dutch boy will walk! They are stalling this investigation and it’s a shame that the US can’t do anything about it. After 2 months, the FBI finally can get involved! The government got involved because the Alabama congressman got involved! From what I read about LaToyia Figueroa, she was attacked by the girlfriend of the father of her child 2 months ago. It seems obvious to me that he or the girlfriend may of done away with her. This is a local case, the Alabama teenager dissapeared in Aruba and this case is important because teenagers/parents need to be warned about these places and this is an example of what happens when you don’t stay with your group! I hope that LaToyia is found alive. I pray for her and her family. In closing, I read today that the father of the child is not helping with the search!!

MTS,

I’m not disputing anything you’re saying. Obviously, in most cases where one single missing person is reported, it doesn’t get that much coverage. I’ve never made any accusations here about prejudice. That may or may not be happening, and if it is, it’s a judgment about what the audience will watch, not who’s more important—I know by now that the mass media isn’t a service industry anymore; sadly, it’s just entertainment most of the time, so the editorial decisions they make in these cases have more to do with the public’s typical reaction than anything else.

I, too, hope for the best possible resolution to all missing persons cases, but in this particular one, some of us were just interested in raising awareness of a woman whose story, up until just a few days ago, had not even been reported in the local media all that well. This is just about awareness to me. No accusations, just awareness.

Thanks for your reply. Holloway family has been in the face of the media pushing from day one. LaToyia Figueroa family has to do the same until a resolution to the case is found. LaToyia’s story has been in the news and in fact, Greta on Fox News reported it right after the Holloway case and also included the other honeymoon missing man’s story. I also caught it on several other stations. I agree with you on the media picking stories. The Holloway case is like a movie mystery and their ratings are probably high. Eventually, it will be over and a new case will take it’s place.

This is from Greta, Fox News blog responding to Dan Coates… FYI

Are you going to go camp out in Philadelphia and devote your whole show to LaToyia [Figueroa] (search) in an effort to find her? Thought not! She’s not a rich little white girl with politically connected parents. At least she didn’t go out drinking and slumming to cause her disappearance.
Dan Coates

ANSWER: Dan, apparently you are not watching. Our show was — I think — the first to report on LaToyia’s disappearnace. We started it on Wednesday night’s show with the lead police looking for her. All day long yesterday FOX did updates on the search for her. FOX News staffers were also dispatched to Philadelphia to help collect news for us about her and book potential guests. The bottom line is this: Often you don’t know the behind the scenes work we do in an effort to gain information and report on a story.

When we start covering a story (like Natalee), we have no idea if it is a one-day story (e.g. the missing person is found right away thus ending the story) or whether the story will be a long one. We can’t anticipate an event like 9/11, which completely changed the topics covered for months. Once we start a story, we like to follow through — although that is not always possible. Sometimes other news stories arise bumping others off the radar screen. If you watched our show, you would know that we cover missing person stories of all races and both genders I admit I would like to cover all the stories in great depth — until the missing person is found (regardless of race, gender or economic status) and we don’t. There are many reasons why we can’t cover some stories in depth —including a lack of cooperation by a police force or family.

Unfortunately, the thing about whether or not the media covers women of color (or of lower income strata) who go missing is an argument that can be had after the fact here. The real story, as some of us are trying to promote, is that a woman has been missing. Did it take some effort from bloggers and members of the Figueroa family to actually get this in front of Greta? It certainly appears so, but now that she’s giving it coverage, maybe we should get off the “racist” tendencies of the mass media.

It may be a discussion that we should have, but I don’t want it to cloud the importance of this particular case. I watched Tucker Carlson trying to bait a blogger on his show the other night, suggesting that this was just a left-wing blogosphere phenomenon—the blogger continually tried to shift the conversation to simply pushing awareness of a missing woman. Unfortunately some in the mass media are getting too caught up in defending their trade (not pointing at Greta here, as I haven’t really seen enough of her over the past couple days), just as some bloggers are getting caught up in making sociopolitical accusations of the media.

Neither side is benefiting the cause of finding Latoyia when that becomes the crux of the conversation. I’d like to see that argument take place in a different context, so as not to take away from the case in hand here.

I have been dealing with issues and not tuned into the world… is this girl still missing and what can I do to help the effort?

email me or something… would like to help.

Keeme

Thanks Keeme. I’ll shoot you an email.

I have wrote on latoya’s whereabouts.I hope that I

[…] fully this gives some of you a bit more of a trail to follow, should you choose to… tsl link

This entry was postedon Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005 at 5:24 pm […]

Can you help keep her plight in the spotlight? Can you help to arrange now for a public trial of this bastard who killed this woman and her baby? PLEASE???

I’m in El Paso, TX, but I’m a Philadelphian, so LaToyia is my sister. There has indeed been a dearth of coverage of LaToyia. The best efforts got her story covered once in July, and just today. No outrage, just a matter of fact entry in the ledger that is the mainstream news. A few people lamenting the “facts” and statistics of why her abduction was insignificant.

Where is the follow-up to her death? Is she to just slip away into the darkness of death? WHY THE HELL AM I STILL HEARING ABOUT SCOT PETERSON, when this woman is just as dead as his wife but Toy’s killer can go on about his life without telling us WHY he took their lives???

Are you going to just let this continue? Are you going to let LaToyia die as if she was insignificant as they say she is? Are you just going to accept that America is a LIE unless you are white?

Or are you going to support this issue and, at the very least, find out why she was killed thru a public trial?

I am asking that Philadelphians give Miss Figueroa and her child remembrance on her birthday as a city day of mourning.

Please do not forget this Princess of Philadelphia.