Reporting as Advertising

Today CNN.com has an article about a woman who kicked a crack cocaine habit. What strikes me about the article is that it is mostly an advertisement for Mothers Making a Change, a 12-step program developed by AA. It is certainly wonderful that the folks at AA have the insight to design programs that can address the problem and, at least often, succeed. But from a journalistic standpoint, it's sort of an odd piece. The article bears more generic resemblance to an info-mercial than anything else. 

What else should it be, you ask? I suppose there is nothing wrong with info-mercials on news sites. On the other hand, it might be nice to see some reporting on how successful the program is or what other programs there are like it and how successful they are. It's also interesting to me that there is never any mention of a significant relationship during her drug use (after her husband's suicide) besides that of mother and child.  There appears to be no one there giving her hope or urging her to walk away from the drugs.

So, I might have asked the journalist to provide a little more detail into her world besides just "Wow, she was screwed up! But look she clawed her way out with the help of this 12-step program". The article is for the most part creating a spectacle. I see people rather too often who probably aren't too far from her condition. Most of them are now homeless, and almost never for the same reason (unless you want to reduce it ultimately to drugs, but I think that is a useless reduction). These people don't self-destruct in a vacuum. There is a whole society bustling around them. So, why do we write about these things as if it bears no connection with our daily lives?

As a friend of ours put it, one of the main problems is that these folks "ain't got no people." 

They're alone.