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So the Centers for Disease Control conducts a survey into the neglect and abuse of infants in their first year of life. They find that each year some 90,000 babies suffer ill-treatment. Most babies are not abused but neglected, with substandard housing, insufficient clothing and inadequate nutrition. Fully one third of such cases are detected in the first week of life, allowing social workers to intervene to train parents in childcare.
Fair enough. So which individual case does CBS decide that Sandra Hughes should use to illustrate this study? By showing us the example of a brain damaged four-year-old who cannot walk or talk because he was violently shaken by his mother's boyfriend at the age of twelve months. To represent neglect, we are shown abuse. To represent the first week of life, we are shown the first year. To represent fixable social problem, we are shown heinous violent crime. This is not good journalism.
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