Should Your Child Watch TV News Surprising Opinions of Top Anchors

Extra than always, kids witness countless, from time to time traumatizing,
news measures on Television. It seems that violent crime and dreadful intelligence is unabating.
Foreign wars, ordinary disasters, terrorism, murders, incidents of child mistreatment,
and health check epidemics flood our newscasts daily. Not to mention the grim
wave of fresh discipline shootings. www.informazionipene.it

All of this intrudes on the innocent globe of children. If, as psychologists
say, kids are like sponges and absorb all that goes on about them,
how greatly does watching TV news really influence them? How watchful perform
parents require to subsist in monitoring the pour of news hooked on the home, and how can
they come across an approach that works?

To react these questions, we curved to a panel of hardened anchors, Peter
Jennings, Maria Shriver, Linda Ellerbee, and Jane Pauley--each having faced the
complexities of raising their own vulnerable kids in a news-saturated
world.

Picture this: 6:30 p.m. After an exhausting daytime by the side of the office, Mom is tiring
making ceremonial dinner. She parks her 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son in facade
of the TV.

"Play Nintendo pending dinner's ready," she instructs the little ones, who,
instead, found flipping channels.

Tom Brokaw on "NBC News Tonight," announces that an Atlanta gunman
has killed his wife, daughter and son , every three with a hammer, previous to disappearing lying on
a shooting run amok that leaves nine dead.

On "World News Tonight," Peter Jennings reports that a oversized jetliner with
more than 300 passengers stopped in a spinning metal fireball by the side of a Hong Kong
airport.

On CNN, here's a report in relation to the earthquake in Dud, with 2,000
people killed.

On the Discovery channel, present's a appropriate particular resting on hurricanes and the
terror they create in kids. Hurricane Dennis has previously struck, Floyd is
coming.

Finally, they distinguish a restricted intelligence story in relation to a roller coaster mishap next to a New
Jersey amusement playing field that kills a protect and her eight-year-old daughter.

Nintendo was never this riveting.

"Dinner's ready!" shouts Mom, oblivious that her children may live terrified
by this alarming hodgepodge of TV news.

What's erroneous with this picture?

"There's a LOT incorrect with it, other than it's not that effortlessly fixable," remarks Linda
Ellerbee, the creator and host of "Nick News," the award-winning reports
program geared intended for kids ages 8-13, ventilation on top of Nickelodeon.

"Watching blood and pierce on top of Television is NOT good designed for kids and it doesn't do
much to enhance the lives of adults either," says the secure, who strives to
inform kids about earth measures without scary them. "We're into
stretching kids' brains and there's nothing we wouldn't cover," with
recent programs on euthanasia, the Kosovo crisis, prayer in schools, book-
banning, the death penalty, and Sudan slaves.

But Ellerbee emphasizes the necessity of parental supervision, protecting
children on or after unfounded fears. "During the Oklahoma City bombing, in attendance
were terrible imagery of children being hurt and killed," Ellerbee recalls. "Kids
wanted to know rider they were protected in their beds. Inside studies conducted by
Nickelodeon, we establish not in that kids locate the news the most frightening fixation
on TV.

"Whether it's the Gulf War, the Clinton scandal, a downed jetliner, before what
happened in Littleton, you have to reassure your children, greater than and over once more,
that they're going to exist OK--that the reason this story is news is that IT
ALMOST NEVER HAPPENS. News is the exception...nobody goes on the air
happily and reports how a lot of planes landed safely!

"My occupation is to put the information keen on an age-appropriate context and lesser
anxieties. Then it's really awake to the parents to monitor what their kids watch
and converse it with them"

Yet a new learn of the role of media in the lives of children conducted by
the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation reveals that 95% of the nation's children
ages 8-18 are watching TV without their parents present.

How does Ellerbee view the typical scenario of the bothered care for above?

"Mom's attractive a beating at this point. Where's Dad?" Ellerbee asks.Perhaps on work,
or living wage unconnectedly as of Mom, before absent altogether.

"Right. Most Moms and Dads are working as stiff as they can as we
live in a society where one profits just doesn't engrave it anymore,"

NBC News correspondent Maria Shriver, the mother of four--Katherine,
13, Christina, 12, Patrick, 10, and Christopher, 6--agrees with Ellerbee: "But
Moms
aren't by means of the TV as a babysitter because they're elsewhere in receipt of manicures!"
says the 48-year-old anchor.

"Those mothers are struggling to make trimmings assemble and they do it as
they call for assist. I don't imagine kids would live scrutiny [as much TV] if their
parents were home organizing a touch football game.

"When I want the TV as a babysitter," says Shriver, who leaves thorough TV-
viewing orders after when itinerant, "I put resting on a safe videocassette. I don't mind
that my kids have watched "Pretty Woman" otherwise "My Best Friend's Wedding"
3,000 time. Papers live supplementary afraid stipulation they watched an hour of confined news.That
would scare them. They might feel: 'Oh, my God, is somebody going to come
in and shoot me in my bedroom?'"

In a budge to supervise her own family added intimately given that her husband,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, became Governor, Shriver
scaled flipside her workload as Contributing Anchor to Dateline NBC and locate awake
her workplace on home: "You can by no means exist watchful an adequate amount of with your kids," she
says, "because watching violence on top of Tube obviously has a vast shock on top of
children--whether it's TV news, movies, or else cartoons."

This vision is shared by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent
Psychiatry, which states: ""TV is a commanding pressure in increasing cost
systems and shaping behavior...studies locate that children may become immune
to the horror of violence; slowly believe violence as a way to explain evils;
and option to anti-social and aggressive actions, imitating the violence they
observe."

Although here are no system about scrutiny TV in 49% of the nation's
households, TV-watching by the Schwarzenegger home is approximately absolutely
verboten:

"We have a blanket regulation that my kids perform not fob watch some Tube by all throughout the
week," she notes, "and having a TV in their bedrooms has never been an
option. I have adequate dilemma in receipt of them to perform their homework!" she states
with a laugh. "Plus the partly hour of reading they have to perform each night.

According to the Kaiser survey, Shriver's household is a obvious omission to
the decree. "Many kids have their possess Tube's Videotape recorder's and video sports event in their
bedroom," the study remarks. Moreover, kids ages 8-18 actually use up an
average of three hours and 16 record watching TV daily; only 44 record
reading; 31 notes using the computer; 27 record playing tape sports meeting;
and a sheer 13 notes using the Internet.

"My kids," Shriver explains, "get home by the side of 4 p.m., have a 20-minute break,
then go away true keen on homework otherwise after-school sports. Then, I'm a full-size believer in
having relatives feast point in time. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting on the
dinner bench and listening to my parents, four brothers, and my grandmother,
Rose. We didn't watch the news.

"After banquet today, we play a game, next my kids are in single bed, interpretation
their books. There's no occasion in that day designed for any Television, but on top of weekends, when
they're allowable to watch a Disney video, Sesame Street, Barney, The Brady
Bunch, before Pokemon."

Beyond protected entertainment, Shriver has eliminated totally the option of her
children surveillance news actions unfolding live on top of TV: "My kids," she notes, "do
not fob watch some Television news, additional than Nick News," in its place only if her children
with Time for Kids, [Teen Newsweek is also available], Highlights, and
newspaper tops discussed over dinner.

"No theme ought to exist off-limits," Shriver concludes, "but you must filter
the intelligence to your kids."

ABC's Peter Jennings, who reigns over "World News Tonight," the nation's
most-watched dusk news summary, forcefully disagrees with a censored
approach to news-watching: "I have two kids--Elizabeth is now 24 and
Christopher is 21-- and they were permitted to watch as a large amount Television news and
information anytime they wanted," says the attach. A hard believer in
kids considerate the world approximately them, he adapted his bestselling book,
The Century, intended for children ages 10 and big in The Century for Young People.

No downside to kids watching news? "I don't know of any downside and I've
thought regarding it numerous time. I worn to worry in relation to my kids' exposure to
violence and unconcealed sexual characteristics in the movies. Like most parents, I set up that though
they were exposed to violence earlier than I would have liked, I don't suffer
they've been exaggerated by it. The jury's immobile absent on top of the sex.

"I have exposed my kids to the violence of the world--to the bestiality of
man--from the incredibly commencement, on age 6 or else 7. I didn't strive to conceal it. I on no account
worried regarding putting a curtain flanked by them and reality, since I not at all felt
my kids would exist spoiled by life form exposed to violence IF they
understood the context in which it occurred. I would talk to my kids about the
vulnerability of children in wartime--the fact that they are blameless pawns--
and in relation to what we could accomplish as a family to create the world a supplementary peaceful
place.

Jennings resolutely believes that coddling children is a mistake: "I've never
talked downward to my children, or else to children period. I forever converse UP to them and
my news summary is suitable intended for children of any age."

Yet the 65-year-old fasten time and again gets letters on or after irate parents: "They'll
say: 'How provoke you put that on by the side of 6:30 when my children are watching?' My
answer is: 'Madam, that's not my problem. That's YOUR problem. It's
absolutely up and about to the parent to observe the pour of news hooked on the home."

Part of directing this flow is turning it inedible in total on meal-time, says
Jennings, who believes family dinners are revered. He is appalled that the
TV is bowed resting on throughout meals in 58% of the nation's households, this according
to the Kaiser study.

"Watching Television throughout dinner is unforgivable," he exclaims, illumination that
he forever insisted that his family hang around pending he indoors home on or after anchoring
the reports. "You're sew true they waited...even when my kids were tiny, they
never ate until 7:30 or 8 pm. Then we would sit with no harmony, rebuff Box. Why
waste such a golden opportunity? Watching TV by mealtime robs the family of
the essence of the dinner, which is communion and exchange of ideas. I indicate,
God, condition the dinner bench is anything, it's a place to learn good manners and
appreciation intended for two of the most belongings in life--food and drink."

Jennings is also unambiguous in his view of junk Television and believes parking
kids on the tube creates dull minds: "I imagine by TV as a babysitter is a
terrible thought for the reason that the damn TV is incredibly tranquilizer, drug-like. Mindless
TV makes for passive being beings--and it's a distraction as of homework!

"My two kids were allowable to watch only a half an hour of entertainment
TV apiece night--and they never had TV's in their bedrooms.It's a conscious
choice I complete as a parent not to tempt them...too seductive..."

Adds Ellerbee: "TV is seductive and is destined to exist. The hard, apparent information is
that when kids are watching TV, they're not responsibility anything else!"

Indeed, according to the National Institute on Out-of-School Time and the
Office of Research Education Consumer Guide, Television plays a bigger position in
children's lives now than always previous to. Kids watch Box an usual of14 to 22
hours apiece week, which accounts for at slightest 25 percent of their free time.

"Dateline NBC" Anchor Jane Pauley, intensely hush-hush, declined an interview
to talk about how she and her husband, cartoonist Garry Trudeau ("Doonesbury")
handle TV-watching with their three young adulthood, two of whom are fraternal twins.
But in a written answer, she decided that kids necessitate to subsist enhanced secluded
from the offensive of violence: "I was a visitor on a municipal elementary educate
not extended before, and was invited to peek in lying on a fourth-grade class lying on 'current
events.' The assignment had been to watch the news and inscribe concerning one of
the stories. Two kids picked the fatal harass lying on a child by a pit bull and the
other wrote about a child who'd hanged herself with a belt! They'd all watched
the nastiest blood and pierce 'News by 11' station in settlement. The teacher gave no
hint that she was as appalled as I was. My response was to help the educate get
subscriptions to "Time for Kids" and "My Weekly Reader." People need to subsist
better intelligence customers. And scandalous Tube is incredibly unhealthy meant for kids."

On this point, Ellerbee gamely agrees:"I really perform think the first
amendment STOPS at your front entrance. You are the boss on home and parents
have all correct to monitor what their kids watch. What's smooth superior is
watching with them and initiating conversations about what they see.If your
child is watching impressive awfully violent, be seated downward and DEFUSE it. Talking
makes the ghosts run...and kids can fracture from beginning to end their scared feelings." http://informazionipene.it/