Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Comments on Wooden death are interesting

If you get a chance, take some time to go to the Joplin Globe's website and read the comments concerning today's article on the investigation into eight-year-old foster child Braxton Wooden's death.
The one at the bottom was the one that interested me, and bothered me the most. It ripped the Globe for continuing to run articles on the case, saying that it happened June 2 and the Globe should let up on it.
This same kind of response came up a few weeks back when the Globe was writing about the situation involving the Joplin police officers and handcuffing the boy at the elementary school. The newspaper was accused, as usual in these cases, of sensationalizing it and blowing it up out of proportion.
Thank God not everyone is as close-minded as these people. If we just let the bad stories disappear, they would keep happening again and again. Without the light shed on the Wooden boy's death by the Globe and the local TV stations, this situation might have just blown over without Social Services and the foster parenting system coming under a much-needed closer examination.
We cannot just close our ears and shut our eyes when bad things happen. That is what the media's job is.
Should the media report only bad news? Of course not, but when it is there, that's when the media has to rise to the occasion. In the Braxton Wooden case, the Globe, KODE, KOAM, and KSNF have done their jobs well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am very concerned about this investigation. As Braxton grandma I feel like I have run into brick walls getting someone to listen to me because I've been told "I'm only the kids grandma". If someone would please check into the investigation the garage that was supposed to be where the gun was hidden was just remodeled and sheet rocked in March 2005 to make it into a bedroom for Ethan so that they would have a bedroom for them to get a foster girl into the home. Does't it make sense that if they were remodeling the garage and working in it everyday or two that someone would have ran across the gun and realized it was loaded or is this just something I would have paid attention to I am sure wondering but I believe it would have drawn enough attention from me that I would have started checking for others out of place. Extremely concerned!