More than at any time, children witness lots of, sometimes traumatizing,
reports events on TV. This seems that thrashing crime and poor news is unabating.
Foreign wars, organic disasters, terrorism, murders, incidents of child maltreatment,
and medical epidemics flood our newscasts daily. Not forgetting the grim
wave associated with recent school shootings.
All of this particular intrudes on the particular innocent world of youngsters. If, as specialists
say, kids are really like sponges in addition to absorb everything that continues on around them,
how profoundly will watching TV media actually affect all of them? How careful carry out
parents need to be able to be in monitoring the flow associated with news into the home, and just how can
they come across an approach functions?
To answer these questions, we turned to a -panel of seasoned anchors, Peter
Jennings, Nancy Shriver, Linda Ellerbee, and Jane Pauley–each having faced the
complexities of setting up their own weak children in a new news-saturated
world.
Image this: 6: 25 p. m. After an exhausting time at any office, Mom is busy
producing dinner. She theme parks her 9-year-old child and 5-year-old boy in front
in the TV.
“Play Manufacturers until dinner’s ready, ” she teaches the little ones, who,
instead, start out flipping channels.
Jeff Brokaw on “NBC News Tonight, very well announces that an Atlanta gunman
features killed his wife, daughter and boy, all three which has a hammer, before proceeding in
a capturing rampage that foliage nine dead.
In “World News This evening, ” Peter Jennings reports that a jumbo jetliner together with
more than 300 passengers crashed in a spinning metal ball of fire at a Hong Kong
airport.
Upon CNN, there’s a record about the earthquake in Turkey, along with 2, 000
people killed.
On the Discovery channel, there’s a timely specific on hurricanes plus the
terror they create in youngsters. Hurricane Dennis has recently struck, Floyd is definitely
coming.
Finally, they see an area news report concerning a roller coaster accident with a Fresh
Jersey leisure park that eliminates a mother plus her eight-year-old girl.
Nintendo was in no way this riveting.
“Dinner’s ready! ” shouts Mom, unaware that her children may well be terrified
simply by this menacing potpourri of TV media.
What’s wrong with this picture?
“There’s a LOT wrong with this, but it’s certainly not that easily fixable, ” notes Bela
Ellerbee, the inventor and host involving “Nick News, inch the award-winning news
program geared for kids ages 8-13, airing on Nickelodeon.
“Watching blood in addition to gore on TV SET is not really good intended for kids plus it won’t do
much to be able to enhance the lifestyles of adults both, ” says the particular anchor, who strives to be able to
inform young children about world occasions without terrorizing these people. “We’re into
stretching kids’ brains and there’s nothing we wouldn’t cover, ” including
recent programs about euthanasia, the Kosovo crisis, prayer in schools, book-
banning, the death fee, and Sudan slaves.
But Trending News stresses the necessity of parental oversight, shielding
children coming from unfounded fears. “During the Oklahoma Town bombing, right now there were awful images of children being hurt in addition to killed, ” Ellerbee recalls. “Kids
needed to know should they were safe within their beds. In studies performed by
Nickelodeon, we found out of which kids find the particular news the most frightening point
about TV.
“Whether it is the Gulf War, the particular Clinton scandal, the downed jetliner, or perhaps what
happened in Littleton, you have to reassure your own children, over and over again,
that they are going to be OK–that the key reason why this specific story is media is that THAT
ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS. Information is the exception… no person goes on the air
happily and records how many aeroplanes landed safely!
“My job is to position the information into an age-appropriate context and lower
stresses. Then it’s genuinely up to typically the parents to keep an eye on what their kids view
and talk to them”