The news brand launched its ‘Missed’ campaign last Sunday (Mother’s Day), highlighting the forgotten, unsolved or underreported cases of missing people across the UK
With more than 170,000 people going missing each year in the UK, the Mirror is using its platform to shine a light on public-facing missing persons in the UK via a live interactive map, in collaboration with the Missing People Charity.
The map will serve as a resource to ensure there is visibility of the diverse scale of missing people in the UK. Readers will be able to click on any region/city/town to see cases, brief descriptions and photos of the missing people.
Furthermore, the Mirror will use its social media platforms, website, newspaper and newsletters to humanise and amplify a diverse range of overlooked missing people case studies, focusing on the missing person’s personality and life to make the reader more conscious of who they are as individuals, rather than a statistic.
The aim is to help spread awareness and bring at least one person home or to safety in 2025, through covering the human stories of missing people and also ask why people go missing, unpacking whether the system is broken and what should be done to fix it.
The Mirror and Missing People will also be launching a joint petition, asking for the publication of a new missing children and adults strategy to ensure police, health and social care play their part, investment in prevention for those at most risk of going missing and improvement in support to every missing child and adult on their return.
Mirror editor-in-chief Caroline Waterston said: “At the Mirror, we are passionate about enacting real change and my thanks goes to Lynda Moyo, our Head of Emerging Content Editor, who has driven this forward so passionately. Every day, we’ll be sharing these stories and working to bring people home or to safety.
“Ultimately every missing person, no matter their background or life choices, is someone’s son, daughter, mother, father, sister, brother, partner, friend and they are always missed.”
