More than actually, children witness many, sometimes traumatizing,
news events on TV. This seems that thrashing crime and awful news is unabating.
Foreign wars, normal disasters, terrorism, killers, incidents of kid mistreatment,
and medical epidemics flood our newscasts daily. Not forgetting the grim
wave associated with recent school shootings.
All of this intrudes on typically the innocent associated with youngsters. If, as researchers
say, kids are usually like sponges in addition to absorb everything that goes on around all of them,
how profoundly will watching TV reports actually affect these people? How careful do
parents need in order to be in tracking the flow associated with news into the home, and how can
they find an approach functions?
To answer these questions, we converted to a screen of seasoned anchors, Peter
Jennings, Nancy Shriver, Linda Ellerbee, and Jane Pauley–each having faced typically the
complexities of rearing their own weak children in a news-saturated
world.
Photo this: 6: 35 p. m. After an exhausting day time at any office, Mother is busy
generating dinner. She theme parks her 9-year-old girl and 5-year-old son in front
in the TV.
“Play Manufacturers until dinner’s prepared, ” she teaches the little kinds, who,
instead, start out flipping channels.
Mary Brokaw on “NBC News Tonight, inches announces that the Atlanta gunman
offers killed his wife, daughter and son, all three using a hammer, before heading upon
a shooting rampage that finds nine dead.
On “World News Tonite, ” Peter Jennings reports that a jumbo jetliner together with
more than three hundred passengers crashed inside a spinning metal ball of fire at a Hong Kong
airport.
In CNN, you will find a report about the earthquake in Turkey, with 2, 000
folks killed.
On typically the Discovery channel, there’s a timely special on hurricanes and the
terror that they create in children. Hurricane Dennis has already struck, Floyd will be
coming.
Finally, they will see an area news report about a roller coaster accident with a Brand new
Jersey enjoyment park that gets rid of a mother and even her eight-year-old child.
Nintendo was in no way this riveting.
“Dinner’s ready! ” shouts Mom, unaware of which her children might be terrified
by simply this menacing potpourri of TV information.
What’s wrong with this particular picture?
“There’s a LOT wrong with it, but it’s certainly not that easily repairable, ” notes Bela
Ellerbee, the originator and host associated with “Nick News, inch the award-winning reports
program geared intended for kids ages 8-13, airing on Nickelodeon.
“Watching blood and gore on TELEVISION is NOT good for kids and it also will not do
much in order to enhance the lives of adults either, ” says the anchor, who strives to be able to
inform children about world activities without terrorizing these people. “We’re into
stretches kids’ brains plus irritating we would not cover, ” including
recent programs about euthanasia, the Kosovo crisis, prayer on schools, book-
banning, the death fees, and Sudan slaves.
But Ellerbee stresses the necessity of parental oversight, shielding
children by unfounded fears. “During Entertainment News , presently there were horrible images of youngsters being hurt plus killed, ” Ellerbee recalls. “Kids
wished to know whenever they were safe in their mattresses. In studies executed by
Nickelodeon, we found out that will kids find typically the news the the majority of frightening issue
on TV.
“Whether it is the Gulf War, the Clinton scandal, a new downed jetliner, or what
happened within Littleton, you have got to reassure your children, over and even over again,
that they are going to end up being OK–that the main reason this kind of story is media is that THIS
ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS. Media may be the exception… no person continues on the air flow
happily and records how many airplanes landed safely!
“My job is to be able to put the information directly into an age-appropriate circumstance and lower
anxieties. Then it’s genuinely up to the parents to monitor what their children enjoy
and discuss it with them”