Hush little baby, don’t say a word

These stories appear prominently in the news because they are terrifying anomalies to everyday existence, not because they reflect normal social behaviour. How are children growing up in a world saturated by reports on disaster expected to recognise that the news is not a daily sample of what could happen to them?

As Jeanne Brooks-Gunn points out, children are more likely to be kidnapped by someone they know than a stranger, yet the disproportionate media attention given to the case of missing Madeleine directs people’s anxiety towards the unidentified assailant. There’s a “Where’s Wally” mentality, along with public fantasies about the heroism and excitement of being the one to find Madeleine.

Global sympathy has rallied people together in a bid to combat the “evil” that mysterious men who steal children represent. It creates a happy spectrum; pedophilia and abduction at one end, middle-class suburban normality at the other.

“Heavy exposure to major catastrophes in the news is associated with intense fear and even post-traumatic stress in children”, says academic Barbara Wilson. Children are known to identify strongly with characters like them in their favourite television shows, but we can hush their crying because it’s only make-believe. What comfort can we give them then when children on the news are only ever in accidents, hurt, stolen, sick or in danger?

Children have long been typecast as sinners or victims in the news, and very rarely have they been able to speak for themselves on the matter at hand. Clearly children who have not yet learned to speak are exempt, but otherwise there is no universally cogent reason for young people to be silenced when their pictures, families and experiences are used in print or film. If, as Wilson says “media can contribute to long-term fear through its influence on conceptions of social reality”, then what sort of reality are we providing for our children; a reality in which children are abused but not heard from?

Professor George Gerbner said that “disproportionate preoccupation with victims in an underrepresented population diminishes and degrades that group”.

All humans are entitled to the same dignity, but somehow this basic principle evades the way we structure our news services. Documentaries frequently feature underage Thai women, child prostitutes or victims of abuse without any attempt to censor their identity. Young people are used as walking symbols of a larger social problem, with no respect for the fact that they too are people and are entitled to their privacy. If we are shown again and again that young people are voiceless victims, we not only become more protective but more dismissive of their rights.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) enshrines children’s right “to freedom of expression and to protection of privacy and attacks against their honour and reputation”. Just this month there was an article about a man charged for sexual assault who insisted that further DNA testing would prove his innocence. (There is no sense in repeating the names of anyone involved, for that would only build on the defamation committed). The story all too rapidly segued from a plea for innocence to a detailed discussion of semen stains on the underwear of the six-year-old young girl, which constitutes a gross and wildly unnecessary invasion of her privacy.

The article detailed the size, shape, state of decay since the crime took place and other vaginal liquids that might have been on the fabric of the underwear. It concluded by suggesting the girl could have been lying. There was no honour; there was no dignity in this article. Why wasn’t the girl approached for her version of the story? Why wasn’t she asked if she minded that the contents of her underwear were publicly discussed? She probably wasn’t even aware that she could object to this kind of intimate disclosure.

An article like this is written by someone posing as the voice of justice and all the while employing the same disregard for a child’s right to privacy that he condemns. Why wasn’t there a Bill Henson-scale protest to the publication of this information? Where are the outraged parents and politicians when children’s privacy is surreptitiously undermined like this, or systematically ignored?

The solution seems to be to make news “adult-only” viewing or to somehow dilute the darker events of the world for children, until they can psychologically digest it properly. But this would not address the remaining scorcher of an issue; that children have no voice in the news.

If we delineate between children and adults in terms of recreational magazines (Kidz Zone v Vogue or The Economist), it follows that there should be a market for news from all ages. Children should be in the news - as sources, authors and witnesses. They should be interviewed on things that concern them, but not as a novelty. Rather than having children’s perspectives appear in different news beats why not appoint special children’s correspondents? They could be trained to deal with children sensitively and function as a messenger between children and the media.