Over the years, HBO has become widely known for its successful series like The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones and Entourage. Today, it celebrates shows like Insecure and Succession. In the background, HBO has consistently put out a number of award-winning documentaries like Baltimore Rising and The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley. This month, Deadline reports that the premium cable network hopes to continue that legacy with the release of a new documentary series called Black and Missing. Led by Geeta Gandbhir and Soledad O’Brien, the four-part docuseries follows the work of Black and Missing Founders Derrica and Natalie Wilson as they dive into disturbing cases of Black folks who have gone missing without many traces. Furthermore, the series will look at how institutional racism and discrimination impacts the search for missing Black youth.
The documentary series will also tackle the disparity in media coverage given to missing Black people in comparison to missing white people. Issues such as this have come up recently when referring to coverage of Gabby Petito's disappearance. Many observers felt that the same level of media coverage could also be used to highlight the thousands of cases of missing Black women and children.
“White women and white girls are dramatically overrepresented,” criminologist Zach Sommers told NBC affiliate, WFLA.
“They make up about half of all news stories written about missing persons. It found that African-Americans who go missing receive less coverage or less likely to appear in the news at all.”
Derrica and Natalie Wilson will work to address those disparities and much more when Black and Missing debuts on HBO on November 23.
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The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255
The National Alliance on Mental Illness 1-800-950-6264
The Association of Black Psychologists 1-301-449-3082
The Anxiety and Depression Association of America 1-240-485-1001
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