Who gets seen?

1 min read · June 26, 2026
New Power Labs

In 2016, Zach Sommers, a sociologist at Northwestern University, published the most comprehensive empirical test of what journalist Gwen Ifill had named "Missing White Woman Syndrome." Drawing on FBI data and coverage from four major online news sources, Sommers found that race and gender shape not only whether a missing person receives any coverage at all, but also how much coverage they receive once they appear in the news.

A Canadian study by Kristen Gilchrist compared coverage of three missing Indigenous women and three missing white women. The white women received 3.5 times more coverage, their stories more likely to appear on the front page, accompanied by photographs, written in intimate rather than detached language. The Indigenous women's cases received far less attention and were far less prominent.

This is the backdrop for the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). Indigenous women and girls make up 4% of the female population in Canada and 16% of all female homicide victims. The MMIWG National Inquiry found they are 16 times more likely to be murdered or to go missing than white women.

For decades, systems - from newsrooms to police departments - have treated some disappearances as more newsworthy, more urgent, and more deserving of public attention than others.

Visibility is not a neutral outcome. When a missing person's case appears in the news, police investigations tend to move faster. Public pressure generates leads. Families get heard. The decision about whose disappearance reaches the front page is also a decision about who receives urgency, investigative resources, public attention, and the presumption that their life matters. 

Newsrooms allocate attention. Police allocate investigative resources. Funders allocate capital. Different institutions, but each begins by deciding what deserves to be seen. 

Founders outside dominant networks often face the same dynamic. If they are not introduced, written about, referred to, or repeatedly encountered, they are overlooked long before anyone evaluates the quality of the business.

Visibility precedes access, and it is shaped by institutions. Before capital is allocated, attention is allocated.

Narinder
New Power Labs

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