Media to the Rescue

By Michelle Giametta on 05/31/2009

Question: Has the world become more dangerous for children or has the age of instant communication increased our awareness?

Thirty years ago on May 25, 1979 a little boy named Etan Patz went missing. To me and to most of my generation the name Etan Patz means nothing even though his disappearance profoundly affected our generation. Six year old Etan Patz begged his parents for permission to walk by himself to his bus stop. If you ask anyone in their 20's about their childhood, you will get the usual description of playdates, supervised playtime, organized activities and an overabundant amount of warnings about strangers. But, if you ask people in their mid-thirties, you would get an entirely different recollection of childhood, one much more carefree and unstructured and one that offered much more freedom for children to be children. Etan Patz changed all that.

A recent New York Post article describes that change this way, "As news of a possible child abduction spread from the close-knit artist community of SoHo through the city, it also put an end to a way of life -- one that allowed kids to run to corner stores, play unsupervised in neighborhood parks and dart around streetlamps and stoops for untended nighttime games of hide-and-seek and stickball." Etan's abduction marked the beginning of the missing children's movement. His picture was the first missing child to appear on a milk carton, and President Reagan named May 25 as "National Missing Children's Day".

Of course, there have been many other famous missing children cases since Etan Patz that have brought attention and advancements in the search for missing children. Most familiar is probably Adam Walsh whose father John Walsh has been a crusader for missing children since Adam's disappearance in 1981. Through America's Most Wanted Walsh created a "...groundbreaking television program [that] has helped take down over 1,050 dangerous fugitives and bring home more than 50 missing children in the past 22 years."

The media has become an essential partner in this effort to locate missing children. The Amber Alert Program was named in honor of a missing little girl named Amber. This program is made possible because of advancements in technology and communications along with the cooperation of the media. When an Amber Alert is sounded, the media jumps right in and splashes the child's photo all over TV, radio announcers give the latest details and many internet sites post the information. All is done as soon as possible to give the child every chance for a safe return. To date, there have been over 400 successful recoveries through the Amber Alert.

In Etan's case, he was abducted on his way to school but the parents did not know he was taken until he didn't return from school. Police and criminal experts claim that the first few hours after an abduction are critical to getting the child back alive. It is important that we appreciate the media's quick response and willingness to cooperate with law enforcement. Without the media many of these recovered missing children might still be missing today.

[Additional Photos: "Amber Alert," My Fox, 2008; "Etan Patz Missing Person Poster", 1979; Americas Most Wanted, Fox, 2009; "Trenton Duckett Amber Alert," CNN 2006]