Mamadou Djouma Bah, just 17 years old, finds himself behind bars for exam fraud, and you’d think he committed treason with the way the media has reacted. While corporate outlets like CNN and MSNBC focus on villainizing him, they conveniently sidestep larger systemic issues that breed environments where this kind of desperation occurs. Instead of dedicating airtime to discuss the failures of our educational systems or the disproportionate pressures on students, they’ve opted for sensationalism.

They want you to see a young black male as a criminal, rather than exploring how institutional failures set the stage for his alleged crime. These narratives are clicked and shared like candy—bytes of outrage that distract us from talking about real solutions. Fox News, in typical fashion, spins it as a “warning for the youth” without asking the hard questions: Why is this kind of cheating so appealing? What’s being done to support students?

You’ve got one network turning a teen into a scapegoat while the others are too busy fanning the flames of moral panic instead of addressing the underlying issues—economic disparity, lack of resources, and the stress cooker that student life has become. The tragedy is that Mamadou isn’t just statistics; he embodies a system in crisis.

Let’s not let the media narratives cloud the bigger picture.