Children and the News

"Children are not written about often enough and when they are, the picture that comes out do not alwways jibe with reality. Perhaps it is time for the young to write about themselves and to express their thoughts on the way they want these to be done."

This June, as students return to school after two months of vacation, PJR Reports focuses on how media covers children, a rather difficult news subject for many journalists. Do journalists remember the do's and don'ts in reporting on children? Rachel E. Khan (Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility deputy director and a journalism professor at the UP Diliman College of Mass Communication) and Elena E. Pernia (communication research professor and current dean of the same college) ask in the issue's main story, "Children in the News".

Reporter Venus L. Elumbre writes a feature story ("From the Mouths of Babes") on Kabataan News Network (KNN), the only show in the country that is written, shot, and produced by teens. The 30-minute weekly program, as editor Chit Estella writes in her editor's note, "gives the lesson that it is never too early to allow young people to see the world from their own eyes and interpret it with their own voice."

Other stories in the June issue include:

"The Climb to the Top" (an article by Don Gil K. Carreon on the "network war" in the recent Everest expedition of Filipino mountaineers)

"'Mutya ng Masa' No More" (a story I wrote on the recent brouhaha over the suspension, and later, dismissal of veteran reporter Doris Bigornia from network giant ABS-CBN)

"Covering Crime" (written by ABS-CBN reporter Willard Cheng, the article introduces us to the world of crime reporting)

"Journalist Killings: A Policy of Indifference" (by Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility executive director Melinda Quintos de Jesus on the continued journalist killings in the country that boasts itself of having the "freest press" in Asia)

Too bad my article, the last time I checked, was still not available online. The other stories, however, are now posted in our website. Please feel free to comment.