PoliGazette » "So you want attention, eh?"

"So you want attention, eh?"

Filed under: Chlidren, Crime, Media Criticism — marc moore on April 5, 2008 @ 2:29 am CEST

Kids these days - it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Turns out the 11-year-old boy who reported an abduction attempt in Houston earlier this week was making it all up.

"He admitted that he had been missing his mother who was at work a lot and and made up the story to get attention," [Houston Police Department spokesman John] Cannon said.

Here’s hoping little Johnny gets "the attention" he needs.

So does that mean that the Houston Chronicle was right to issue only a vague description of the reported kidnapper. I’m sure there are some editors there who are, if not high-fiving it around the office, congratulating themselves on having played it cool.

If so, they’re wrong to think they served the public trust, just are they were wrong to release a useless description of the suspect in the aftermath of the report.

The only thing this incident demonstrates is that children are often unreliable witnesses, something that only makes believing other children’s real problems harder.

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