The “irresponsible media megaphones” of child welfare

Friday’s Reliable Sources newsletter from CNN’s indefatigable media reporter Brian Stelter was all about the way many journalists still cover child welfare – though I’m sure Stelter didn’t realize it. In fact, the column says not a word about the “child welfare” system or, as it should be called, the family policing system. 

Rather, the column was devoted to politicians who exploit horror stories to boost the power of the traditional police. He cites this example: 

We can see it happening this week in the sudden storyline about Trump increasing federal law enforcement in DC while fear-mongering about crime being "totally out of control."

 

Responsible news outlets keep pointing out, as PBS "NewsHour" did, that "contrary to the president’s claims, violent crime in Washington, DC, last year hit a 30-year low." Nationally, as well, there is clear FBI data "showing crime down in every category," anchor Geoff Bennett said. …

 

But irresponsible media megaphones are engaging in argument by anecdote. They're citing highly visible crimes … to justify Trump's desire to exert more control in DC. For example, Fox's story about the show of force asserts "a concerning surge in violent crime" with no mention of data to the contrary. [Emphasis in original – it’s Stelter’s style.]

 

This has, of course, been the “child welfare” establishment playbook pretty much forever. There’s even a name for it: “health terrorism.” Take a horror story, generalize from it (argue by anecdote), and use it to demand a vast increase in the number of children torn from everyone they know and love in cases that are nothing like that horror story. Instead of making children safer, it traumatizes thousands of children with needless foster care, exposes them to the high risk of abuse in foster care itself and so overloads the system that workers have even less time to find those few children in real danger.

 

But, as Stelter points out, while mainstream news organizations aren’t falling for it when it comes from Trump, often they still fall for it in “child welfare” when it comes from extremists who happen to have “professor” in front of their names, or cushy posts at extremist think tanks. Or they fall for it when it comes from a grandstanding local pol or the head of the local so-called “child advocacy” organization.

 

The good news: Journalists are falling for it a lot less than they used to. When they still fall for it, politicians are less likely to respond with knee-jerk demands to tear apart more families. And when they fall for it, it’s usually just that; a blunder based on the revulsion we all feel when adults do horrible things to children and a failure to seek more context and a wider variety of sources, rather an reporters being irresponsible.

 

Oh, by the way: Look through back editions of the federal government’s annual Child Maltreatment report, and you’ll find that the rate of child abuse in America peaked in 1993. It’s declined more than 50% since then, reaching a record low in 2023. During the first few years of this time period, foster care numbers went up. For the rest, they went down.

 

So here’s a suggestion to reporters covering child welfare: The next time anyone tries to exploit a tragedy to stampede us into demanding that we tear apart more families, imagine that Donald Trump is uttering those words.  Then fact-check accordingly.