Press Centre 2006/04/19 (2): Children’s Rights

Reporting on children’s issues must be undertaken with sensitivity and understanding

The media has a unique and vital role in raising and monitoring progress on commitments to children.

UNICEF
The State of the World’s Children 2006

Ankara, 19 April 2006 -- A series of seven seminars designed to assess awareness of children’s rights amongst journalists, lawyers and academics and to promote ethical reporting about children and children’s issues were conducted in the provinces of Adana, Ankara, Diyarbakır, Erzurum, Kocaeli, Muğla, and Samsun. UNICEF conducted the seminars between November 2005 and March 2006 with the participation of the IPS Communication Foundation.

Taking the form of structured presentations on children’s rights, media coverage of children in news items and informal discussion of the issues raised, each of the seminars ran for two days.

Children, their rights and the media

Speaking on behalf of UNICEF Turkey at the opening of the seminar in Ankara, Communications Officer, Sema Hosta explained that:

The mission of the media is not only to report events but that the information they present to the public, besides being checked for factual accuracy, should also be ethically sound and respect the rights of vulnerable groups such as children.

Hosta drew attention to the role of the media in the support and promotion of children’s rights issues:

Local journalists and broadcasters have an especially important part to play in this respect. The UNICEF experience is that, although social conditions and levels of public awareness may vary dramatically from one region to another in Turkey -- even between regions that are in close geographical proximity -- the media have a consistent, vital role in reaching people and explaining the issues UNICEF seeks to address.

For example, local media proved to be so much more effective in the recent Haydi Kızlar Okula! campaign to reduce the gender gap in primary education and get more girls into school. This was down to the intimate knowledge they had of their public and how to communicate and inform them in the most direct and immediate way about regional issues affecting girls’ education.

UNICEF Communications Adviser for the Central and Eastern Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States Region (CEE/CIS), Lynn Geldof, said that:

Many people around the world are unaware of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and it is it not widely known that all but two nations have ratified the Convention.

Countries that have ratified the Convention -- such as Turkey -- are obliged to make periodic reports to the Committee on the Rights of the Child showing progress in the regulation of policy and legislation with respect to upholding children’s rights. The preparation of this report is very important, as are alternative reports by civil society organisations and the media because they are a social control mechanism on issues not covered in governmental reports.

So the media has a very positive, proactive role to play in this respect. Coverage of events and issues concerning children in the press and on television not only provides a useful ‘barometer’ of public awareness of these matters but it also reflects general attitudes to children’s affairs, highlighting strengths that can be built upon and weaknesses that need more work.

By treating children with respect and focusing on their issues without pandering to popular tastes for sensationalist or sentimental content, the media can do so much to promote public awareness of these matters and contribute to the whole process of raising national standards in child health, education, development and protection.

In doing so, the media should also set an example to the public by acting responsibly and upholding children’s rights -- reporters should avoid disclosing important facts that could compromise the privacy or safety of the children involved in their reports, for example.

Reporting on children

Participants were tested at the beginning and end of each of the seminars in order to determine how their knowledge of children’s rights and related issues had been improved. It was found that:

• although as few as 50% acknowledged the obligation to protect the child’s confidentiality and identity before the seminars, considerably more were aware of this following training -- more remains to be done, however, in order to establish this as a nationwide standard for media ethics;
• awareness of the need to give children a more active rather than passive role along with an explanation of why they are being asked to take part in news production increased;
• a reduction was observed in the misapprehension that accurate information about the behaviour and opinions of children in news reportage could be gleaned from other parties such as adults, members of the security forces, parents etc.

The specific focus of the seminar on children’s issues helped us to take a better, more comprehensive look at what we are doing in the national and local media, said Mutlucan Şahin of Galatasaray University.

These are issues that we have all been aware of to some extent or another but chose to ignore for our own various reasons

Tolga Çevikkol, also of Galatasaray University, said:

We give a great deal of editorial space over to reports on children in Turkey but I think that we need to question what kind of reports are we producing about children? I for one will be following trends in coverage of children and children’s issues a good deal more closely in future.

I’ve been working as a journalist for many years now, said Ergün Özmen of Bilecik’s Yeni Pazar newspaper:

But I didn’t realise just how many mistakes I was making in my handling of reports involving children. It seems that we are too ready to judge children without taking their special circumstances as ‘minors’ into account. There’s no such thing as a ‘criminal child’ for instance -- rather a child who has been pushed or forced into committing crime.

Zafer Beyaz, from Bursa Mustafa Kemal Paşa Dost, said:

I was unaware that I had been failing to see children as people who are growing and developing -- that they would one day be adults -- and that I was unconsciously refusing to think of them as individuals just like myself. It has been truly important for me to realise that children are vulnerable individuals and that as journalists we need to take great care to respect that.

In a letter of commitment, which they signed at the end of each training session, journalists pledged to fulfil their responsibilities as members of the media to implement the rights outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

They also promised to produce a minimum number of reports or interviews about children and their issues that would help raise awareness of children’s rights and also to ensure that such reports would be published or broadcast in the various media organs for which they work.

In doing so, journalists also undertook to take the utmost care not to violate the rights of children involved in such reports and to protect their rights to freedom of expression and to have an opinion on the issues concerning them.

Furthermore, virtually all participants expressed their desire to become members of the Child Friendly Media Communication Network.

UNICEF, children and the media

UNICEF’s flagship report, The State of the World’s Children 2006, Excluded and Invisible, says:

Media professionals -- journalists, writers, broadcasters and programme developers -- are the eyes, ears and voices of society and [they] have great influence on how children are visualised and portrayed. [The media] can also help by putting children’s rights squarely on the agenda and drawing the attention of the general public and opinion makers to the violations of those rights, using their work to hold governments accountable.

The report also says:

Excluded and invisible children can often make compelling news stories -- from street children to child soldiers -- and there is enormous potential for the media to create a social climate that demands their inclusion. But not all media professionals take care to portray such children with the respect and understanding that is their due. The media can sometimes contribute to the exploitation of children -- for example, by stereotyping them as powerless victims of abuse, conflict, crime and poverty, as perpetrators of crimes or as charming innocents. Combined with sensationalism, these limited representations can lead to exploitation of children who are experiencing rights violations -- for example, by providing identifying details or failing to explore the child’s capacities and strengths.

For more information:

Sema Hosta, Communications Officer, UNICEF Turkey,
Tel: +90 (0)312 454 1010

The State of the World’s Children 2006, Excluded and Invisible, will shortly be available in Turkish.

Visit bianet.org for more about children in the media in Turkey.

Visit unicef.org for more about children and the media.

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