With the virtual shut-down of Russian adoptions coming as the last US agencies lost their licenses to conduct adoptions in that country yesterday, the danger of backlash to news hype shows its ugly face.

As the feeding frenzy that followed the Masha Allen case of sexual abuse and degradation flew into high gear, many people in the international adoption community were quick to scrabble in the dirt and muck hand in hand with the media. As always happens, a little bit of information, or often misinformation, gets fingers flying over keyboards and tongues wagging, and far too many figure they're not worth their salt until they expound on unfounded opinions and take up their torches and pitchforks.

For the anti-adoption brigade, such behavior is a gift from above. What could be easier than to let the folks who are ostensibly very much in favor of international adoption grab on to the bit of dirty cloth that casts adoptions in a grim and terrible light, then shred and spread the threads all over the place in a greedy frenzy? If adoptive parents are so quick and happy to jump all over the fray condemning and pointing fingers and leaping to assumptions while lumping negatives together into huge piles ... the same adoptive parents the anti-adoption people despise and blame, insinuating that were there no adoptive parents there would be no adoptions, and that would somehow be a good thing ... all the better for the bizarre and narrow cause of removing the option of adoption for the children of the world.

Anyone who supports international adoption, who understands that the world is a small place and all its children deserve a loving family, must learn to distinguish between flash and substance, then to do what they can to keep the substance in the foreground while the flash is allowed to burn itself out.

As it works in the real world of media where it's money, not journalistic integrity that counts, fair and accurate representation of a big picture is not on the agenda. In fact, it is so far from being near the top of the priorities for "news" that truth is frequently intentionally sacrificed on the alter of the lurid and the shocking.

For an up-close and personal look at how easily the news is bent and warped and manipulated, look out for tomorrow's posts