Jessica McClure - Media Impact

Media Impact

CNN, then a fledgling cable news outlet, was on the scene with around-the-clock coverage of the rescue effort. This massive media saturation of the ordeal prompted then-President Ronald Reagan to state that "everybody in America became godmothers and godfathers of Jessica while this was going on."

From the beginning, and throughout the incident, the switchboard for a local media outlet, KMID-TV, was flooded with telephone calls from news organizations and private individuals around the world, seeking the latest information on rescue efforts - and in some cases, sharing their own insight into this and similar incidents.

In 1988, Jessica and her family appeared on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee to talk about the incident.

Ron Short, a muscular roofing contractor who was born without collarbones because of cleidocranial dysostosis and so could collapse his shoulders to work in cramped corners, arrived at the site and offered to go down the shaft; they accepted his offer, but did not use it.

The photograph of her being rescued fetched the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for spot news photography to Scott Shaw of the Odessa American.

D. Lance Lunsford wrote The Rainbow's Shadow: True Stories of Baby Jessica's Rescue & the Tragedies That Followed, which was published in 2006.

ABC made a TV movie of the story in 1989, Everybody's Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure, starring Patty Duke and Beau Bridges. The film featured, as extras, many participants in the actual rescue and its coverage.

On May 30, 2007, USA Today ranked McClure #22 on its list of "25 lives of indelible impact."

The footage of McClure being rescued is shown in Michael Jackson's music video "Man in the Mirror" and in the movie V for Vendetta.

In 2010 blues musician Charlie Musselwhite released an album titled "The Well". In the title song he credits Jessica McClure's ordeal for inspiring him to quit drinking, stating, "She was trapped in there with a broken arm in the dark, in a life-and-death situation she was singing nursery rhymes to herself and being brave,"..."It made my problems seem tiny. So as a prayer to her and myself, I decided I wasn't going to drink till she got out of that well. It was like I was tricking myself, telling myself that I wasn't going to quit for good, just until she got out. It took three days to get her out, and I haven't had a drink since."