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Matthew Shepard, seen here in an undated AP file photo. The coverage his death inspired may have implications beyond those gay activists consider as some crimes that capture the national consciousness, like the killings of Lacy Petersen or JonBenet Ramsey, do so because the victims are perceived as especially sympathetic, helpless or beautiful. (Photo by Gina Von Hoof)
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HOME > ENTERTAINMENT > FEATURE
By: RYAN LEE and DYANA BAGBY COMMENTS
 
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work,” Renna said of GLAAD, noting that the agency’s 1999 awards ceremony was largely focused on coverage of the killing.
Five years after Shepard’s death, Renna was working equally hard to draw media attention to the murder of Sakia Gunn, a 15-year-old lesbian who was stabbed to death in 2003 in Newark, N.J., after rebuffing the flirtatious advances of her male attacker, Richard McCullough (A documentary of her life, “The Sakia Gunn Story,” will be shown at the Reel Affirmations film festival Saturday at 5 p.m.).
“I was fighting tooth-and-nail to get coverage,” said Renna, who noted that many media outlets even overlooked a memorial vigil for Gunn that 3,000 people attended.
Kim Pearson, an associate professor of English at the College of New Jersey, used the Lexis-Nexis database to compare media coverage of Shepard and Gunn’s death. She found that there were 735 stories in approximately 3,000 major newspapers in the year after Shepard’s death, compared to only 22 stories about Gunn’s murder.
“Shepard fit the stereotype editors have of a sympathetic victim — he was the ‘All-American’ boy,” Pearson said. “Sakia was a kid from Newark, she was poor, black and violated gender norms — she dressed like a boy.
“And, third, the circumstances of her death — what was this young teen doing out so late? — made her a less sympathetic victim,” Pearson added. “She was constructed as an ‘other.’”
Among the only media outlets to cover a memorial service for Zapata in Greely were a local newspaper and television station, along with the Spanish-language network Univision.
“Who’s to say why one incident gets pushed to the forefront and others are not,” said Donna Rose, a transgender activist who spoke at Zapata’s memorial service, which drew about 200 mourners.
The media have to walk a fine line of drawing attention to an awful crime and not intruding in “a family’s cocoon of grief and confusion.”
“You don’t want to turn it into a media circus,” Rose said. “This is an opportunity for families to grieve and for people to come together.”
Although media coverage of bias-motivated transgender killings is rare, Rose noted that one of the most prominent “common date” transgender individuals share is the annual “Day of Remembrance,” which honors transgender individuals killed each year.
“Unfortunately, the lists of the people we come to honor every year is long,” Rose said.
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