More than ever before, children witness countless, sometimes traumatizing,
reports events in the news. It seems that thrashing crime and awful news is unabating.
Foreign wars, organic disasters, terrorism, murders, incidents of child abuse,
and medical epidemics flood our newscasts daily. Let alone the particular grim
wave associated with recent school shootings.
All of this kind of intrudes on the innocent regarding young children. If, as specialists
say, kids are generally like sponges plus absorb everything that will moves on around all of them,
how profoundly will watching TV reports actually affect these people? How careful do
parents need to be able to be in tracking the flow involving news into the particular home, and exactly how can
they look for an approach functions?
To answer these questions, we converted to a -panel of seasoned anchors, Peter
Jennings, Nancy Shriver, Linda Ellerbee, and Jane Pauley–each having faced the particular
complexities of bringing up their own weak children in some sort of news-saturated
world.
Photo this: 6: 25 p. m. After an exhausting working day at any office, Mother is occupied
producing dinner. She parks her 9-year-old girl and 5-year-old son in front
from the TV.
“Play Nintendo until dinner’s ready, ” she teaches the little types, who,
instead, start flipping channels.
Mary Brokaw on “NBC News Tonight, ” announces that a good Atlanta gunman
features killed his spouse, daughter and son, all three using a hammer, before proceeding in
a capturing rampage that finds nine dead.
In “World News Today, ” Peter Jennings reports that the jumbo jetliner using
more than three hundred passengers crashed in the spinning metal ball of fire at a Hong Kong
airport.
About CNN, you will find a record about the earthquake in Turkey, using 2, 000
folks killed.
On typically the Discovery channel, there’s a timely special on hurricanes and even the
terror these people create in young children. Tech News has already struck, Floyd is usually
coming.
Finally, that they see a neighborhood news report about a journey accident at a New
Jersey entertainment park that eliminates a mother in addition to her eight-year-old daughter.
Nintendo was never this riveting.
“Dinner’s ready! ” shouts Mom, unaware that her children may be terrified
by this menacing potpourri of TV reports.
What’s wrong with this picture?
“There’s a great deal wrong with it, but it’s not really that easily fixable, ” notes Linda
Ellerbee, the inventor and host involving “Nick News, inches the award-winning information
program geared intended for kids ages 8-13, airing on Nickelodeon.
“Watching blood and even gore on TV SET is just not good intended for kids also it won’t do
much in order to enhance the existence of adults either, ” says the anchor, who aims in order to
inform children about world situations without terrorizing them. “We’re into
extending kids’ brains and even irritating we didn’t cover, ” which include
recent programs upon euthanasia, the Kosovo crisis, prayer in schools, book-
banning, the death fees, and Sudan slaves.
But Ellerbee stresses the necessity of parental supervision, protecting
children through unfounded fears. “During the Oklahoma City bombing, generally there were bad images of young children being hurt plus killed, ” Ellerbee recalls. “Kids
wanted to know should they were safe in their mattresses. In studies performed by
Nickelodeon, many of us found out that kids find the particular news the almost all frightening issue
about TV.
“Whether it is the Gulf War, the Clinton scandal, the downed jetliner, or perhaps what
happened throughout Littleton, you have to reassure the children, over in addition to over again,
they are going to always be OK–that the reason why this story is information is that THIS
ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS. Media will be the exception… no one goes on the air flow
happily and records how many aeroplanes landed safely!
“My job is to be able to put the information straight into an age-appropriate circumstance and lower
anxieties. Then it’s definitely up to typically the parents to screen what their children observe
and discuss it with them”