ROOKE: Americans Finally Have A Good Reason To Praise The Press

Interesting 60 minutes, mainstream media, mental health, motherhood, murder, ross douthat admin September 21, 2026 0 Comments

ROOKE: Americans Finally Have A Good Reason To Praise The Press

Our media class has trained the public not to trust them. Decades of choosing winners, whether political or cultural, have left Americans wary of anything the media produces. That is why Ross Douthat’s “60 Minutes” interview with Patrick Clancy felt like a correction.

One of the most frustrating aspects of modern media is the constant need for journalists to become the story. But Douthat changed the routine. Instead, he did the simplest and rarest thing in modern television: he let the surviving father talk about his three children who were killed at the hands of his estranged wife, Lindsay Clancy.

Cora was 5. Dawson was 3. Callan was 8 months old. Lindsay has admitted, through her lawyers, that she strangled them in the basement of the family’s Duxbury home in January 2023. One of the more heart-wrenching moments of the interview came when Patrick spoke about the moment first responders found Callan still alive. He said he raced to Boston Children’s Hospital, praying for another chance with him.

“Just give me one. Just give me one kid, and I would raise him as best I could,” he said. “I’d tell him about his brother and sister.”

But he knew the moment he saw the doctor’s face that Callan’s prognosis was grim. Callan’s heart kept beating for four days. Patrick spent those days at the bedside, writing tributes to all three children with one hand while holding Callan’s with the other. He said that he told his son, “I’m so sorry,” and was holding him in the bed when Callan died in his arms.

For months, as the trial coverage continued, the national narrative didn’t focus on these moments. The biggest culprits were amateur sleuths on TikTok who created a fake world where Lindsay could not have done what she admitted to doing. Patrick became the suspect. (Sign up for Mary Rooke’s weekly newsletter here!)

Mainstream coverage was often more polite, but not much better. The press introduced Lindsay and her mental health struggles as the most important facts for the public to understand. The talk focused on failed doctors, overmedication, and the loneliness of new motherhood. No one in legacy media spoke about the fear the children must have felt dying at the hands of their mother. Nor did they show compassion for Patrick, who lost everyone he had once loved and the future life he had with them.

Douthat delivered a cultural correction that our society desperately needed. He did not spend the interview litigating whether Lindsay deserved more pity. He asked Patrick questions that helped show the full picture of the devastation. Something we haven’t gotten before. Patrick said he still dreams about his children all the time and these dreams feel lucid. He described one dream where he’s in the kitchen, and Cora walks in. He asks her where she’s been, and she hugs him.

Douthat allowed these moments to sit there long enough for the audience to feel the absence left by his children being gone.

My heart shattered when Patrick said that Lindsay had never asked for forgiveness and that, despite that, he’s given it to her anyway. It’s hard to imagine a mother who supposedly wakes up from psychosis to find that she killed her children, not feeling enough remorse to beg her husband’s forgiveness; let alone a husband willing to forgive her. But in this moment, Americans from all walks of life were shown the true meaning of forgiveness. It’s not about taking responsibility away from the perpetrator, but about not letting the hatred that builds in times like this consume you.

Our media has spent a generation congratulating itself for humanizing defendants. The worst among us have been given a free pass because of their childhood or, in this case, psychiatric conditions. But the result is always that the victims become an afterthought. (RELATED: Did Lindsay Clancy Inspire A Copycat?)

Americans do not need to pretend this interview repaired the press as a whole. One good hour does not cancel a year of ghoulish commentary. Still, Douthat proved that the job is still possible. You can reject modern media’s interpretation of the role. You can ask the father what he lost and name the children without trying to sympathize with a woman who strangled three young children to death. Douthat understood the difference and, for once, so did a major broadcast. And in today’s media environment, that is also a reason to say thank you.

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