More than ever before, children witness countless, sometimes traumatizing,
media events on TV. This seems that thrashing crime and poor news is unabating.
Foreign wars, organic disasters, terrorism, killers, incidents of child mistreatment,
and medical epidemics flood our newscasts daily. Not to mention the particular grim
wave of recent school shootings.
All of this kind of intrudes on the particular innocent regarding youngsters. If, as researchers
say, kids are usually like sponges and even absorb everything that will continues around them,
how profoundly may watching TV reports actually affect these people? How careful perform
parents need in order to be in watching the flow involving news into typically the home, and how can
they get an approach that works?
To answer these kinds of questions, we switched to a screen of seasoned anchors, Peter
Jennings, Maria Shriver, Linda Ellerbee, and Jane Pauley–each having faced typically the
complexities of rearing their own vulnerable children in some sort of news-saturated
world.
Image this: 6: 25 p. m. After an exhausting time at school, Mother is hectic
generating dinner. She leisure areas her 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old kid in front
of the TV.
“Play Manufacturers until dinner’s prepared, ” she teaches the little ones, who,
instead, begin flipping channels.
Mary Brokaw on “NBC News Tonight, ” announces that a great Atlanta gunman
features killed his better half, daughter and child, all three which has a hammer, before heading in
a firing rampage that finds nine dead.
About “World News Today, ” Peter Jennings reports that the jumbo jetliner using
more than three hundred passengers crashed inside a spinning metal ball of fire at a Hong Kong
airport.
Upon CNN, which review about the earthquake in Turkey, together with 2, 000
folks killed.
On typically the Discovery channel, there is a timely special on hurricanes and even the
terror they will create in youngsters. Hurricane Dennis has struck, Floyd is usually
coming.
Finally, these people see a local news report concerning a journey accident from a Fresh
Jersey entertainment park that kills a mother in addition to her eight-year-old child.
Nintendo was in no way this riveting.
“Dinner’s ready! ” shouts Mom, unaware that her children might be afraid
simply by this menacing potpourri of TV news.
What’s wrong with this particular picture?
“There’s a great deal wrong with it, but it’s certainly not that easily fixable, ” notes Bela
Ellerbee, the inventor and host regarding “Nick News, inch the award-winning information
program geared regarding kids ages 8-13, airing on Nickelodeon.
“Watching blood and gore on TV is just not good for kids also it won’t do
much to enhance the lifestyles of adults either, ” says typically the anchor, who works to
inform kids about world events without terrorizing these people. “We’re into
extending kids’ brains plus absolutely nothing we wouldn’t cover, ” which includes
recent programs on euthanasia, the Kosovo crisis, prayer in schools, book-
banning, the death penalty, and Sudan slaves.
But Ellerbee focuses on the necessity for parental direction, shielding
children from unfounded fears. “During the Oklahoma Metropolis bombing, there were bad images of children being hurt plus killed, ” Ellerbee recalls. “Kids
needed to know when they were safe within their bedrooms. In studies conducted by
Nickelodeon, all of us found out of which kids find typically the news the most frightening factor
about TV.
“Whether it is the Gulf War, typically the Clinton scandal, a new downed jetliner, or what
happened within Littleton, you have got to reassure the children, over plus over again,
that they are going to be OK–that the reason why this specific story is news is that THIS
RARELY HAPPENS. Reports could be the exception… no person continues the air
happily and records how many aeroplanes landed safely!
” Tech News is in order to place the information directly into an age-appropriate circumstance and lower
worries. Then it’s really up to the parents to keep track of what their kids observe
and discuss it with them”