Should Your Child Watch TV News Surprising Opinions of Top Anchors

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Extra than always, brood witness incalculable, from time to time traumatizing,
news measures on Box. It seems that violent crime and terrible reports is unabating.
Foreign wars, ordinary disasters, terrorism, murders, incidents of child ill-treatment,
and medicinal epidemics flood our newscasts daily. Not to mention the grim
wave of new discipline shootings. opinioni

All of this intrudes on the blameless globe of children. If, as psychologists
say, kids are like sponges and absorb the lot that goes on about them,
how greatly does watching TV news in fact influence them? How watchful act
parents call for to live in monitoring the flow of news addicted to the home, and how can
they come across an approach that works?

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

Picture this: 6:30 p.m. After an exhausting daylight hours on the office, Mom is demanding
making ceremonial dinner. She parks her 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son in face
of the TV.

"Play Nintendo pending dinner's ready," she instructs the little ones, who,
instead, create 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 departing on top of
a shooting run riot that leaves nine dead.

On "World News Tonight," Peter Jennings reports that a huge jetliner with
more than 300 passengers stopped in a spinning metal fireball on a Hong Kong
airport.

On CNN, present's a report regarding the earthquake in Dud, with 2,000
people killed.

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

Finally, they distinguish a confined reports tale in relation to a roller coaster misfortune by the side of a New
Jersey amusement square that kills a mother and her eight-year-old daughter.

Nintendo was never this riveting.

"Dinner's ready!" shouts Mom, oblivious that her children may subsist terrified
by this threatening assortment of TV news.

What's incorrect with this picture?

"There's a LOT erroneous with it, except it's not that easily fixable," comments Linda
Ellerbee, the creator and host of "Nick News," the award-winning reports
program geared designed for kids ages 8-13, exposure to air on top of Nickelodeon.

"Watching blood and gore lying on Tube is NOT first-class designed for kids and it doesn't accomplish
much to enhance the lives of adults either," says the attach, who strives to
inform kids about planet actions without petrifying 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 as of unfounded fears. "During the Oklahoma City bombing, in attendance
were terrible imagery of children being hurt and killed," Ellerbee recalls. "Kids
wanted to recognize condition they were protected in their beds. Inside studies conducted by
Nickelodeon, we create not in that kids discover 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, more than and over another time,
that they're going to subsist 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 addicted to an age-appropriate context and inferior
anxieties. Then it's really up and about to the parents to monitor what their kids watch
and argue it with them"

Yet a new revise 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 distinctive scenario of the harassed care for above?

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

"Right. Most Moms and Dads are effective as firm as they can for the reason that 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 absent receiving manicures!"
says the 48-year-old anchor.

"Those mothers are struggling to create split ends meet and they perform it as
they want lend a hand. I don't imagine kids would subsist inspection [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 full TV-
viewing commands behind when roving, "I put lying on a protected videocassette. I don't mind
that my kids have watched "Pretty Woman" or "My Best Friend's Wedding"
3,000 era. Identification subsist extra apprehensive condition they watched an hour of limited 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 move to supervise her own brood additional personally as her husband,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, became Governor, Shriver
scaled rear her workload as Contributing Anchor to Dateline NBC and locate out of bed
her workplace by the side of home: "You can by no means exist watchful sufficient with your kids," she
says, "because watching violence on top of Box evidently has a vast crash on top of
children--whether it's TV news, movies, or else cartoons."

This outlook is shared by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent
Psychiatry, which states: ""TV is a commanding sway in rising cost
systems and shaping behavior...studies discover that children may become immune
to the horror of violence; steadily agree to violence as a way to explain troubles;
and option to anti-social and aggressive deeds, imitating the violence they
observe."

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

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

According to the Kaiser survey, Shriver's household is a obtrusive exemption to
the law. "Many kids have their own Box's Videotape recorder's and video sports meeting in their
bedroom," the cram explanation. Moreover, family ages 8-18 really use an
average of three hours and 16 action watching TV daily; only 44 action
reading; 31 record by the computer; 27 notes playing videocassette sports meeting;
and a sheer 13 record by the Internet.

"My kids," Shriver explains, "get home by the side of 4 p.m., have a 20-minute break,
then go off true keen on homework before after-school sports. Then, I'm a life-size believer in
having relatives ceremonial dinner occasion. 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 these days, we play a game, after that my kids are in divan, understanding
their books. There's no occasion in that day intended for any Television, apart from resting on weekends, when
they're permitted to watch a Disney video, Sesame Street, Barney, The Brady
Bunch, before Pokemon."

Beyond secure entertainment, Shriver has eliminated wholly the option of her
children scrutiny news actions unfolding live on top of TV: "My kids," she notes, "do
not timepiece some Television news, supplementary than Nick News," in its place as long as her children
with Time for Kids, [Teen Newsweek is also available], Highlights, and
newspaper tops discussed over dinner.

"No theme must subsist 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 sunset news bulletin, forcefully disagrees with a censored
approach to news-watching: "I have two kids--Elizabeth is now 24 and
Christopher is 21-- and they were allowable to watch as a great deal Tube news and
information anytime they wanted," says the attach. A hard believer in
kids sympathetic the world about them, he adapted his bestselling book,
The Century, intended for children ages 10 and older in The Century for Young People.

No downside to kids watching news? "I don't recognize of some downside and I've
thought regarding it numerous time. I second-hand to worry regarding my kids' exposure to
violence and obvious sexual category in the movies. Like most parents, I establish that although
they were exposed to violence faster than I would have liked, I don't feel
they've been pretentious by it. The jury's motionless elsewhere resting on the sex.

"I have exposed my kids to the violence of the world--to the bestiality of
man--from the incredibly commencement, by the side of age 6 before 7. I didn't try to conceal it. I on no account
worried in relation to putting a curtain sandwiched between them and reality, as I not at all felt
my kids would subsist 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 innocent pawns--
and concerning what we could do as a family to make the world a additional peaceful
place.

Jennings definitely believes that coddling children is a mistake: "I've never
talked downhill to my children, before to children period. I for eternity chat UP to them and
my news update is proper designed for children of some age."

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

Part of directing this flow is turning it rancid all told by the side of meal-time, says
Jennings, who believes family dinners are revered. He is appalled that the
TV is curved on top of through meals in 58% of the nation's households, this according
to the Kaiser study.

"Watching Television during dinner is unforgivable," he exclaims, illumination that
he for all time insisted that his family stay in anticipation of he indoors home beginning anchoring
the reports. "You're darn accurate they waited...even when my kids were tiny, they
never ate until 7:30 otherwise 8 pm. Then we would sit with no melody, rebuff Tube. 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 denote,
God, rider the dinner bench is anything, it's a place to learn etiquette and
appreciation meant for two of the furthermost belongings in life--food and drink."

Jennings is also plain in his view of junk Box and believes parking
kids by the side of the tube creates dull minds: "I reflect by means of TV as a babysitter is a
terrible plan for the reason that the damn box is extremely tranquilizer, drug-like. Mindless
TV makes for passive being beings--and it's a distraction beginning homework!

"My two brood were permissible to watch only a partially an hour of entertainment
TV for every night--and they never had TV's in their bedrooms.It's a conscious
choice I ended as a parent not to tempt them...too seductive..."

Adds Ellerbee: "TV is seductive and is intended to exist. The rigid, 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 function in
children's lives currently than increasingly sooner than. Kids watch Television an usual of14 to 22
hours for each week, which accounts for on slightest 25 percent of their free time.

"Dateline NBC" Anchor Jane Pauley, intensely personal, declined an interview
to converse 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 reply, she decided that kids necessitate to subsist improved sheltered
from the offensive of violence: "I was a visitor at a municipal elementary train
not extended before, and was invited to peek in on top of a fourth-grade class lying on 'current
events.' The assignment had been to watch the news and inscribe regarding one of
the stories. Two kids selected the deadly assault on top of 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 gore 'News on 11' station in settlement. The teacher gave no
hint that she was as appalled as I was. My response was to help the school get
subscriptions to "Time for Kids" and "My Weekly Reader." People require to live
better intelligence customers. And scandalous Box is awfully unhealthy designed for kids."

On this point, Ellerbee willingly agrees:"I really act consider the first
amendment STOPS on your front entrance. You are the boss by the side of home and parents
have all true to observe what their kids watch. What's even improved is
watching with them and initiating conversations about what they see.If your
child is watching amazing dreadfully violent, be seated downward and DEFUSE it. Talking
makes the ghosts run...and kids can rupture from beginning to end their scared feelings." opinioni

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