ABSTRACT
Under the ethos of public service broadcasting, television has been required not only to entertain, but also to educate and inform. Nowadays, from the security of their own homes, people are able to see graphic scenes of wars and disasters or the torments suffered by inhabitants of Third World countries as they struggle to survive. They are invited to journey visually through the human body via miniature cameras, to survey the world beneath the sea or to study close up the insects in their own back gardens magnified thousands of times. Fifty years ago, before television was commonplace, only a few had some real-life experience of any of this, but now the majority of people are exposed to it daily without ever stepping outside their own front doors. Yet how much of this vast range of visual information is actually retained and understood, particularly by children, who may often take for granted television’s ability to offer a window on the world?
