Childhood and Media

From Save the Children and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), this guide for journalists and media professionals in Valencia, Spain, is based upon a study, among communication professionals from TV, radio, periodicals, and daily newspapers, of their understanding of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) of the United Nations (UN) (1989) as it applies to the presentation and participation of children in the media.

In the study results, 42% of respondents were aware of the contents of the CRC, while 38% had heard about it. The guide describes the 54 articles in 4 broad categories: rights to survival, rights to protection, rights to development, and rights to participation. The right to participation includes establishing the obligation to provide children and young people opportunities to express their opinions freely, be heard, and participate in all matters affecting them.

Respondents' knowledge of and opinions of codes of journalistic conduct and style are then examined to see how and whether they reflect the CRC contents. 82% of respondents claimed to know the law of protection of minors and its implications for diffusion and utilisation of images in media. 67% felt that media is very influential in confirming opinions and perceptions in society; 80% felt that themes involving children should receive special consideration and criteria for professional practice, while 86% didn't know about the rights focus of their work regarding children. And 94% were interested in learning about these rights, preferring a print manual or digital manual for understanding them. The guide then gives recommendations for media professionals regarding the application of the CRC to their work.

The sixth recommendation covers guaranteeing the right to child participation in media from CRC Article 12. From a translation of the document: "The right to participate is one of the guiding principles.... Participate implies the freedom to express their [the children's] opinions and to be considered in any process or decision affecting them. As noted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child recently, the media have an important role in promoting of this right... Despite the widespread belief that children should receive special consideration and care from society, rarely does this equates to actively to include children as principal protagonists....Children have a right to publish and disseminate their opinions....The adoption by the professional media of the positioning of information based on compliance with the law on child participation can significantly contribute to a change in... social perception, where children gradually assume a role more central as actors, as citizens and as people with rights and not as mere objects of protection...

• Include child participation processes in the design of contents of the media (children's time, series scripts and drawings etc)

• [G]ive visibility to initiatives led by children."