His request was denied by KTVU news director Amber Eikel, who said the tagline was inappropriate and questioned Somerville’s news judgement to link the story to domestic violence before any suspects were convicted. Somerville asked to include a less-than-30-second sidebar as an addendum to the story with additional facts and statistics that showed Black women in America experience higher rates of domestic violence than white women in America, according to the source. Somerville, who is the father of a Black adopted daughter, shared these beliefs, desiring to add a brief tagline critiquing the extraordinary media coverage Petito’s story had garnered at the end of a planned straight news report updating the details of the case, according to the source.
Reid is among those who believe coverage of Petito’s disappearance is an example of the media phenomenon late journalist and broadcaster Gwen Ifill described as “missing White woman syndrome,” during which the media provides a lopsided focus on missing white women and girls without providing equal coverage for similar cases of missing women of color. The search for Petito has sparked a nationwide media frenzy, though some in the journalism industry, most prominently MSNBC’s Joy Reid, have argued the attention it has received as undue. The FBI has issued an arrest warrant for Petito’s 23-year-old fiancé, Brian Laundrie, and he is considered a prime suspect in her suspected homicide.
Somerville, 63, has been “suspended indefinitely” by KTVU management following a disagreement over ongoing coverage of the Gabby Petito missing person and homicide case.Īccording to the source, the conflict with Somerville came to a head when the body of Petito was discovered in Wyoming earlier this week, after she had been reported missing while on a cross-country camping trip with her fiancé. KTVU news anchor Frank Somerville has again been removed from the air, as first reported by the Mercury News and confirmed by a source at KTVU who spoke to SFGATE.
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