If you are Diane Sawyer and ABC News, the answer is clear – getting the story.

How else can you explain the failure to report this stuff to the police?

The shocking beating of a teenage girl by her father that aired during a Diane Sawyer report about dysfunctional stepfamilies has set off a firestorm.

State police officials in upstate Lake Placid say they are going over the tape of last Friday's "Primetime" news magazine to determine if charges can be brought against the natural father, a Iraq War military reservist, and the teen's stepmother.

The investigation -- which includes the local Franklin County DAs office, police said -- was only part of the fallout from the broadcast.

Outraged viewers have filled up the ABC News Web site's message board with more that 1,400 messages in the first 36 hours after the broadcast -- many calling for Sawyer and the program's producers to be fired for not going to the authorities immediately.

The beating was caught on videotape recorders that the family -- identified as Lynn and Joe Nelson -- had allowed ABC News to install in their home for a program on the difficulties stepfamilies have getting along.

The family had control of the cameras and could turn them off at any time.
ABC News officials said in a statement that by the time they had reviewed the tapes, the father "had been sent to the National Guard training camp and then onto Iraq. Kyle [the daughter] had moved in with her grandparents -- where she remains to date."

In other words, reporting a crime takes backseat to the news judgment of the network.

Posted by: Greg at 11:35 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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