ARTICLES / PROJECTS: EU, Save the Children plead for children's rights respect in SA, Zambia media,B

By: Issa Sikiti da Silva

The European Union (EU), Save the Children, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) , South Africa's Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) and Zambia's Media Network on Child's Rights and Development (MNCRD) last week jointly launched a daring project, 'Children and Media: Championing Best Practice', which aims to work with 570 children and 500 journalists to ensure children's rights are respected in the media, and a more representative and ethical journalism is practised in both countries.

Critics continue to deplore the increasingly 'unethical' behaviour of most African media houses, which sensationalise children's stories to boost circulation, viewership and listenership in the view of making huge profits.

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RESOURCES / PUBLICATIONS: Children's Views Not in the News: Portrayal of Children in South African Print Media 2009

This 34-page report is from Media Monitoring Africa (MMA), which, as part of its Empowering Children and the Media (ECM) strategy, researched selected print media's coverage of children and children's rights in South African news. As part of this study, media coverage of children for the period of May 17 to August 30 2009 was divided into 5 broad questions:

1. Have children's rights been respected, and is the coverage ethical?
2. Are children's voices heard?
3. Are children's issues covered in depth?
4. Are a diversity of children represented - in terms of age, sex, race, and region?
5. How has the media covered children, overall?


source - full document in pdf