Supplementary than increasingly, brood witness numerous, now and then traumatizing,
news proceedings on Box. It seems that violent crime and terrible information is unabating.
Foreign wars, usual disasters, terrorism, murders, incidents of child cruelty,
and medicinal epidemics flood our newscasts daily. Not to cite the grim
wave of topical discipline shootings. opinioni

All of this intrudes on the blameless planet of children. If, as psychologists
say, kids are like sponges and absorb the whole thing that goes on about them,
how greatly does watching TV news in point of fact involve them? How wary perform
parents call for to live in monitoring the pour of news addicted to the home, and how can
they discover an approach that works?

To reply 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 possess vulnerable family in a news-saturated
world.

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

"Play Nintendo until 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 , each and every one three with a hammer, previous to leaving on top of
a shooting tear that leaves nine dead.

On "World News Tonight," Peter Jennings reports that a outsized 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 Failure, with 2,000
people killed.

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

Finally, they distinguish a restricted information account in relation to a roller coaster mishap next to a New
Jersey amusement commons that kills a protect and her eight-year-old daughter.

Nintendo was never this riveting.

"Dinner's ready!" shouts Mom, uninformed that her children may live terrified
by this intimidating collection of TV news.

What's incorrect with this picture?

"There's a LOT erroneous with it, except it's not that easily fixable," remarks Linda
Ellerbee, the creator and host of "Nick News," the award-winning reports
program geared meant for kids ages 8-13, ventilation resting on Nickelodeon.

"Watching blood and gore lying on Box 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 brood about earth measures without horrifying them. "We're into
stretching kids' brains and there's nothing we wouldn't cover," counting
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 beginning unfounded fears. "During the Oklahoma City bombing, in attendance
were terrible descriptions of children being hurt and killed," Ellerbee recalls. "Kids
wanted to know stipulation they were safe in their beds. Inside studies conducted by
Nickelodeon, we create absent that kids discover the news the most frightening fixation
on TV.

"Whether it's the Gulf War, the Clinton scandal, a downed jetliner, or else what
happened in Littleton, you have to reassure your children, in excess of and over once more,
that they're going to live 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 work is to put the information hooked on an age-appropriate context and lesser
anxieties. Then it's really up and about to the parents to observe what their kids watch
and talk about it with them"

Yet a innovative 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 archetypal scenario of the bothered look after above?

"Mom's captivating a beating at this time. Where's Dad?" Ellerbee asks.Perhaps on work,
or income discretely on or after Mom, otherwise absent altogether.

"Right. Most Moms and Dads are working as solid as they can as we
live in a society where one takings immediately doesn't cut it anymore,"

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

"Those mothers are struggling to create trimmings convene and they accomplish it because
they require assist. I don't reflect kids would live scrutiny [as much TV] if their
parents were home organizing a touch football game.

"When I call for the TV as a babysitter," says Shriver, who leaves comprehensive TV-
viewing orders behind when wandering, "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. Papers live additional apprehensive stipulation they watched an hour of restricted 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 possess kids supplementary personally given that her husband,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, became Governor, Shriver
scaled reverse her workload as Contributing Anchor to Dateline NBC and locate awake
her headquarters next to home: "You can not at all exist on your guard sufficient with your kids," she
says, "because watching violence on top of Tube evidently has a enormous collision on top of
children--whether it's TV news, movies, or else cartoons."

This sight is shared by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent
Psychiatry, which states: ""TV is a influential sway in increasing price
systems and shaping behavior...studies locate that children may become immune
to the horror of violence; regularly recognize violence as a way to solve harms;
and alternative to anti-social and aggressive performance, imitating the violence they
observe."

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

"We have a blanket law that my kids accomplish not wristwatch one Tube on all throughout the
week," she notes, "and having a TV in their bedrooms has never been an
option. I have sufficient difficulty in receipt of them to accomplish their homework!" she states
with a laugh. "Plus the partially hour of reading they have to do every night.

According to the Kaiser survey, Shriver's household is a conspicuous omission to
the decree. "Many kids have their own Television's Video recorder's and video sports competition in their
bedroom," the study comments. Moreover, brood ages 8-18 actually expend an
average of three hours and 16 notes watching TV daily; only 44 action
reading; 31 action by the computer; 27 action playing videocassette sports event;
and a measly 13 record using the Internet.

"My kids," Shriver explains, "get home next to 4 p.m., have a 20-minute break,
then leave accurate hooked on homework or after-school sports. Then, I'm a full-size believer in
having people feast occasion. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting next to the
dinner desk and listening to my parents, four brothers, and my grandmother,
Rose. We didn't watch the news.

"After feast today, we play a game, after that my kids are in double bed, analysis
their books. There's no instance in that day intended for any Television, apart from lying on weekends, when
they're permitted to watch a Disney video, Sesame Street, Barney, The Brady
Bunch, before Pokemon."

Beyond in safe hands entertainment, Shriver has eliminated completely the option of her
children surveillance news actions unfolding live resting on TV: "My kids," she notes, "do
not timepiece some Box news, supplementary than Nick News," as an alternative if her children
with Time for Kids, [Teen Newsweek is also available], Highlights, and
newspaper ends discussed over dinner.

"No focus be supposed to exist off-limits," Shriver concludes, "but you must filter
the reports to your kids."

ABC's Peter Jennings, who reigns over "World News Tonight," the nation's
most-watched twilight news bulletin, forcefully disagrees with a censored
approach to news-watching: "I have two kids--Elizabeth is currently 24 and
Christopher is 21-- and they were permissible to watch as a great deal Box news and
information anytime they wanted," says the secure. A rigid believer in
kids thoughtful the world in the region of them, he adapted his bestselling book,
The Century, designed for children ages 10 and older in The Century for Young People.

No downside to kids watching news? "I don't know of some downside and I've
thought regarding it many time. I second-hand to worry regarding my kids' exposure to
violence and obvious sexual category in the movies. Like most parents, I set up that although
they were exposed to violence faster than I would have liked, I don't undergo
they've been precious by it. The jury's unmoving absent resting on the sex.

"I have exposed my kids to the violence of the world--to the bestiality of
man--from the extremely start, by the side of age 6 before 7. I didn't try to hide it. I on no account
worried in relation to putting a curtain stuck between them and reality, for the reason that I not at all felt
my family would exist hurt by creature exposed to violence IF they
understood the context in which it occurred. I would speak to my kids about the
vulnerability of children in wartime--the fact that they are innocent pawns--
and regarding what we could do as a family to make the world a added peaceful
place.

Jennings decisively believes that coddling children is a mistake: "I've never
talked downstairs to my children, otherwise to children period. I for all time chat UP to them and
my news summary is apt designed for children of some age."

Yet the 65-year-old fasten frequently gets letters beginning irate parents: "They'll
say: 'How defy you put that on next to 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 monitor the flow of news addicted to the home."

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

"Watching Box through dinner is unforgivable," he exclaims, explanation that
he forever insisted that his family remain awaiting he indoors home beginning anchoring
the information. "You're darn accurate they waited...even when my kids were tiny, they
never ate until 7:30 before 8 pm. Then we would sit with no melody, rejection Tube. Why
waste such a golden opportunity? Watching TV on mealtime robs the family of
the essence of the dinner, which is communion and exchange of ideas. I denote,
God, condition the dinner board is anything, it's a place to learn protocol and
appreciation designed for two of the greatest clothes in life--food and drink."

Jennings is similarly unambiguous 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 thought for the reason that the damn TV is extremely sedative, drug-like. Mindless
TV makes for passive human being beings--and it's a distraction beginning homework!

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

Adds Ellerbee: "TV is seductive and is intended to exist. The rigid, obvious information is
that when kids are watching TV, they're not burden anything else!"

Indeed, according to the National Institute on Out-of-School Time and the
Office of Research Education Consumer Guide, Box plays a larger responsibility in
children's lives currently than yet previous to. Kids watch Tube an usual of14 to 22
hours for each week, which accounts for at slightest 25 percent of their gratis time.

"Dateline NBC" Anchor Jane Pauley, intensely hush-hush, declined an interview
to argue how she and her husband, cartoonist Garry Trudeau ("Doonesbury")
handle TV-watching with their three adolescence, two of whom are fraternal twins.
But in a written answer, she settled that kids need to subsist superior sheltered
from the onslaught of violence: "I was a visitor on a communal elementary educate
not extensive back, and was invited to peek in resting on a fourth-grade class on top of 'current
events.' The assignment had been to watch the news and write regarding one of
the stories. Two kids picked the fatal 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 most awful 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 teach get
subscriptions to "Time for Kids" and "My Weekly Reader." People require to exist
better intelligence patrons. And lurid Box is extremely unhealthy designed for kids."

On this point, Ellerbee willingly agrees:"I actually act consider the first
amendment STOPS by your front entrance. You are the boss next to home and parents
have all true to monitor what their kids watch. What's yet enhanced is
watching with them and initiating conversations about what they see.If your
child is watching impressive appallingly violent, sit down downstairs and DEFUSE it. Talking
makes the ghosts run...and kids can smash from beginning to end their scared feelings." funziona