KIDS AND THE NEWS
More than ever, children witness innumerable, sometimes traumatizing,
information events on TV. It seems that violent crime and awful information is unabating.
Foreign wars, herbal failures, terrorism, murders, incidents of baby abuse,
and medical epidemics flood our newscasts day by day. Not to say the awful
wave of recent college shootings.
All of this intrudes on the innocent Heavy News world of kids. If, as psychologists
say, youngsters are like sponges and take in the entirety that is going on around them,
how profoundly does watching TV news simply have an effect on them? How cautious do
mother and father want to be in monitoring the float of news into the home, and how can
they discover an approach that works?
To answer those questions, we turned to a panel of seasoned anchors, Peter
Jennings, Maria Shriver, Linda Ellerbee, and Jane Pauley–each having confronted the
complexities of raising their very own susceptible youngsters in a information-saturated
international.
Picture this: 6:30 p.M. After an exhausting day at the workplace, Mom is busy
making dinner. She parks her 9-yr-vintage daughter and 5-year-vintage son in front
of the TV.
“Play Nintendo until dinner’s equipped,” she instructs the little ones, who,
alternatively, start flipping channels.
Tom Brokaw on “NBC News Tonight,” broadcasts that an Atlanta gunman
has killed his spouse, daughter and son, all 3 with a hammer, earlier than happening
a capturing rampage that leaves nine useless.
On “World News Tonight,” Peter Jennings reviews that a jumbo jetliner with
extra than three hundred passengers crashed in a spinning steel fireball at a Hong Kong
airport.
On CNN, there is a report about the earthquake in Turkey, with 2,000
humans killed.
On the Discovery channel, there’s a timely unique on hurricanes and the
terror they invent in children. Hurricane Dennis has already struck, Floyd is
coming.
Finally, they see a nearby information report about a curler coaster accident at a New
Jersey enjoyment park that kills a mom and her eight-yr-antique daughter.
Nintendo turned into by no means this riveting.
“Dinner’s ready!” shouts Mom, unaware that her kids can be terrified
by way of this menacing potpourri of TV information.
What’s wrong with this photo?
“There’s a LOT wrong with it, however it is no longer that effortlessly fixable,” notes Linda
Ellerbee, the author and host of “Nick News,” the award-prevailing information
program geared for children a while 8-thirteen, airing on Nickelodeon.
“Watching blood and gore on TV is NOT properly for kids and it would not do
plenty to beautify the lives of adults either,” says the anchor, who strives to
inform youngsters approximately international events without terrorizing them. “We’re into
stretching kids’ brains and there’s not anything we would not cowl,” including
latest programs on euthanasia, the Kosovo crisis, prayer in schools, e-book-
banning, the demise penalty, and Sudan slaves.
But Ellerbee emphasizes the necessity of parental supervision, defensive
youngsters from unfounded fears. “During the Oklahoma City bombing, there
had been horrible images of youngsters being hurt and killed,” Ellerbee recalls. “Kids
wanted to realize if they were secure of their beds. In studies performed by way of
Nickelodeon, we located out that youngsters discover the information the most horrifying aspect