More than ever before, children witness many, sometimes traumatizing,
news events in the news. It seems that thrashing crime and poor news is unabating.
Foreign wars, normal disasters, terrorism, killers, incidents of kid maltreatment,
and medical epidemics flood our newscasts daily. Not to mention typically the grim
wave involving recent school shootings.
All of this specific intrudes on the particular innocent world of children. If, as specialists
say, kids are usually like sponges and absorb everything that will continues around these people,
how profoundly will watching TV information actually affect all of them? 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 types of 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 setting up their own prone children in a new news-saturated
world.
Image this: 6: 35 p. m. Right after an exhausting time at the office, Mother is hectic
making dinner. She park systems her 9-year-old girl and 5-year-old child in front
with the TV.
“Play Manufacturers until dinner’s ready, ” she teaches the little types, who,
instead, start out flipping channels.
Tom Brokaw on “NBC News Tonight, ” announces that an Atlanta gunman
provides killed his wife, daughter and boy, all three using a hammer, before heading in
a shooting rampage that foliage nine dead.
Upon “World News This evening, ” Peter Jennings reports that a new jumbo jetliner together with
more than 3 hundred passengers crashed within a spinning metal fireball at a Hong Kong
airport.
In CNN, which record about the earthquake in Turkey, with 2, 000
men and women killed.
On the particular Discovery channel, there is a timely particular on hurricanes in addition to the
terror they create in children. Hurricane Dennis has struck, Floyd will be
coming.
Finally, they will see an area news report regarding a roller coaster accident with a Fresh
Jersey entertainment park that kills a mother in addition to her eight-year-old child.
Nintendo was never this riveting.
“Dinner’s ready! ” shouts Mom, unaware of which her children may be afraid
simply by this menacing potpourri of TV news.
What’s wrong with this picture?
“There’s a whole lot wrong with that, but it’s not necessarily that easily fixable, ” notes Bela
Ellerbee, the inventor and host associated with “Nick News, ” the award-winning information
program geared for kids ages 8-13, airing on Nickelodeon.
“Watching blood and gore on TV is NOT good regarding kids also it doesn’t do
much to be able to enhance the lives of adults either, ” says the anchor, who aims to
inform kids about world situations without terrorizing them. “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 charges, and Sudan slaves.
But Ellerbee stresses the necessity of parental direction, protecting
children coming from unfounded fears. “During the Oklahoma City bombing, right now there were awful images of kids being hurt and even killed, ” Ellerbee recalls. “Kids
wished to know should they were safe inside their beds. In studies carried out by
Nickelodeon, we found out that will kids find the particular news the many frightening point
about TV.
“Whether it’s the Gulf War, the Clinton scandal, some sort of downed jetliner, or perhaps what
happened inside Littleton, you need to reassure your current children, over and over again,
that they’re going to always be OK–that the main reason this kind of story is media is that THAT
RARELY HAPPENS. Information will be the exception… no person moves on the surroundings
happily and reports how many planes landed safely!
” Education News is to be able to put the information into an age-appropriate framework and lower
worries. Then it’s genuinely up to the particular parents to keep track of what their kids watch
and talk to them”
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