Is Oregonlive showing racism in it's coverage of missing Portland Oregon children?

 Thank You Carole for sending me the Oregonlive posts

Yesterday I posted about missing Lok Chante Marcellay-Ball  and contrasted the coverage of his apparent abduction with Kyron Horman's and how it appears that the coverage by Portland Oregon media discriminates on their coverage based on race (see: Racism in the search of missing Portland, Oregon children)

When Kyron Horman went missing, the Portland Oregon media and especially Oregonlive had non stop coverage.  In fact, the first two days, Oregonlive ran FIVE stories about Kyron's disappearance.  All made the front page headlines.  Even now, four months later, any time there is anything said about Kyron, Oregonlive is all over it and it makes the front page.  Not so about Lok Chante Marcellay-Ball.

Yesterday I posted about Lok's disappearance (See: Lok Chante Marcellay - Missing 11 year old Portland Oregon boy )  Today, he is still missing, presumed in the custody of his mother's boyfriend (but not 100% certain)  Oregonlive has absolutely no coverage of his disappearance mentioned on their front page.

Today at 12:10PM I did a survey of a few of the Portland media web pages as well as a couple of Seattle area ones to compare.  Here is what was on the front page about Lok's disappearance:

Portland Oregon:
KATU - link on top front page
KPTV headline story - picture front page
KGW - link w/ pic at top - above 209K link / pic
KOIN - headline story w/ pic
portlandtribune.com - Major headline with pic

Oregonlive - NOTHING

Seattle Washington:
KOMO - link on top front page with picture
KING - link on front page

Northwest Cable News (note that NWCN, KGW, and KING are all Belo properties)
NWCN - link w/ pic on the very top

You may wonder what is more important than a missing child to Oregonlive? Their major headline story was on lower mortgage rates (with large picture) and it was more important to tell the taxpayers they are forking over another $209,000 for Kyron Horman's search (minor headline with picture) than to inform them there is another missing child and that they should be on the lookout for a car with Washington State license plates 660 ZZU .  There was absolutely NO MENTION of Lok's disappearance on their front page even though it made the front page and was the major headline on all the other Portland media sites that I checked at 12:10PM today.  Clicking on the link "Real Time News" on the Oregonlive main page, there still was absolutely no mention of Lok's disappearance - and the banner at the very top? "Kyron Horman Special coverage"

Why is Oregonlive ignoring the disappearance of a Native American missing child?

Yesterday on the message boards when questioned why Oregonlive was not running Lok's disappearance on the front page, here was the response by Oregonlive (remember, law enforcement said Kyron's disappearance was not a stranger abduction from the start as well) (Thank you, Carole, for sending me this)

This story is now buried deeply in Oregonlive and is not "newsworthy" for them
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/10/police_look_for_missing_11-yea/4053/comments-newest.html

johnkillen October 13, 2010 at 6:22PM

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Folks:

Thanks for coming to OregonLive and reading The Oregonian.

There seems to be a lot of comments in which people are wondering about the timing and play of this story. I'll try to help out:

1. We didn't report this story until this afternoon because that's when we found out about it. There were no news releases or other information until then. As soon as we heard about it from Portland Police, we posted it. We also began contacting as many people as we could to check out what we were hearing and wrote what we could verify.

2. Why isn't it at the top of the website page? It spent much of the day up there, but we're being told this is not a stranger abduction and that it may be related to some sort of domestic situation. That doesn't mean we're not interested, but it does mean it's not as big a story as it would be if there were any belief that this boy was the victim of a kidnapping by a stranger or if police had concerns that he might be in harm's way. If we find out that is the case -- and we are actively tracking developments -- the story will get a much higher profile.

3. An Amber Alert is only used under very specific situations. This situation does not appear to meet that critieria. Check out this site: http://www.amberalert.gov/guidelines.htm

Hope that helps.

John Killen

Breaking News editor

The Oregonian

503-294-5055

John Killen, The Oregonian October 13, 2010 at 7:14PM

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CasaChichi:

I hope so, too, of course. But like I said, we're still pursuing and if we hear anything to the contrary, we will amp up the coverage of this situation.

Sincerely,

John Killen

Why is Oregonlive still covering every second of every event in the Kyron Horman case but is ignoring a child people should be on the lookout for and is not even  getting the license plate number out there in order to help locate Lok?  The only difference is Kyron Horman is a little white boy and Lok is Native American - or is Oregonlive really Kaine's sock puppet and not giving equal time to other children because they do not want the attention taken off of Kyron and the $$$ Kyron's story generates for them?

Once again, Look out for Lok and call 9-1-1 if you see him or a car with Washington State License Plates 660 ZZU

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