Teenage drinkers and the parents who cover for them

A CBS affiliate in Washington recently set out to prove that there’s a youth alcohol problem in the District. What it didn’t expect to uncover is that it has a “parenting” problem too.

Reporter Andrea McCarren was forced off the air in the backlash against the reports she aired.

“At first I was frightened and then I became angry,” McCarren told CBS News this morning. “It felt like an orchestrated Facebook and Twitter campaign of hate. People put my home address on the internet. There were calls for revenge and retaliation against my family. I’m now in about my 27th year as a reporter and I have never seen anything like this. It seems like these suburban, affluent kids have simply never been told ‘no.’ They have an inflated sense of entitlement. They feel entitled to cell phones, computers, cars, and in this case, they appear to feel entitled to doing something illegal, which is drink underage of 21.”

“One of the most memorable things, was at an underage drinking party that was busted by police, one of the parents showed up to collect his son and he said right in front of police, ‘Why didn’t you run?'”