Tammie Fields: A news reporter who cares about missing black woman

Tammie Fields WTSP

Tonight I received a phone call from a news anchor at WTSP a CBS affiliate in Tampa Florida. Her name is Tammie Fields and she was calling to talk to me about the media's coverage of missing black women. She wanted to let me know that there were many black reporters out there in the media who are working hard to get the stories of these missing women on air.

What struck me right away was her passion to get these cases on air. She told me that she takes it personally when we, myself included question black media's role in helping find our missing. Tammie Fields has been a reporter / anchor for over 20 years and even though she is a anchor and doesn't have to actually go out and report stories she does to make sure these missing women get the coverage they deserve.

She is currently reporting on the case of missing woman Christina Voltaire a missing college student in Florida. You check out her coverage here: http://winterhaven.wtsp.com/news/news/105468-missing-winter-haven-college-student-wanted-locks-changed

Christina Voltaire's story has beeen featured on Find Our Missing tonight on TVone. ( 9 PM Eastern Time on Wednesdays )

Fields stressed the importance of contacting the media to get missing women coverage and gave me these tips:

* Someone needs to write up a press release even if it's just a paragraph containing all of the pertinent information about the missing individual. This press release must go to the assignment editor of every local newspaper, radio station, and television station


* CALL THE POLICE FIRST! File a missing persons report. The media will check with the police to see what is going on and if there is no police report chances are there will be no news coverage.


* Whoever the contact person is for the missing person's family must be available 24/7 to the media and be ready to do 10-15 minute interviews for all media. They should have a recent photo for the media also.


* If there are any news reporters are anchors of color in your area contact them. They want to cover these stories but they can't cover what they don't know about. It helps to have someone on the inside fighting to get these stories on air.


I want to applaud Tammie Fields for her hard work and dedication to the stories of missing African Americans. I was especially heartened when she told me that reporters of color all over the country are fighting to get these stories on the air also.

Thank you all