Once again America is blind to another atrocity, this time not on another nation's soil, but on our own. In early September in West Virginia, a 20-year-old woman was found beaten, sexually harassed, and scared out of her mind. Her name is Megan Williams, a black young lady, and the people who have been charged with harming her are white. She allegedly was forced to eat dog and rat feces, forced to drink blood, and drink from the toilet, she was beaten, stabbed, and sexually harassed. She said that they called her the N-word each time they stabbed her.

My question today is why doesn’t anyone know about this? I found out simply through my older sister who attends a historically black college or university. How can the general public of America be blind to such an atrocity; why is the knowledge of this event concentrated in the black population? Regardless of whether she’s black or not, this is something that deserves front-page stories, like Michael Vick’s dog fights. Through the mainstream media of America this woman has been deemed less important than a dog. Does that not say something to you?

Ever since my sister told me about this, it has clouded my mind and work. It filled me with anger that this happened in the first place, in America, the place of the tolerant, the “melting pot,” the place where civil rights has placed me among my peers regardless of my race, right? That’s the idea. Yet, Williams has been virtually ignored by mainstream media and remains in the back of prestigious newspapers and news shows. In one article that I did find, her name was not mentioned throughout the entire article; she was just another faceless black woman who is apparently irrelevant to the general American public.

I was filled with anger and hopelessness, but then I thought about it a little bit more and realized that, although so many other journalists in America had ignored her I didn’t have to. I am a journalist and I have a job. Through Mr. Porreca's lessons and speeches and through the recent Illinois High School Press Association journalism conference I have realized that I too have a journalistic purpose. My purpose is to present the truth in the best way possible, and along the way, a bit of my opinion.

What so many people don’t realize is that media in so many ways almost controls what we know as the public, and it scares me that the gruesome truth is so often ignored for a lighter, happier article about something people can laugh about or something people want. This case is not something that will make you smile, or make you laugh, this is something that will hopefully cause you to think, and think deeply. After all, isn’t that the point of journalism?