ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a research project on children and news conducted by myself, by Dr. Cynthia Carter and Dr. Karin Wahl-Jorgensen of the Cardiff School of Journalism. Media and Cultural Studies, and by Dr. Stuart Allan of the University of the West of England. Children serve certain specific functions in news coverage of war and disaster – not all of these functions being in the child's broader interests, and often without the child's explicit consent. In the analysis of war-time stories, children disappeared as active agents. Twenty-seven of the 83 wartime stories featured children and 19 were war-related. Children were shown as 'patients' both in the grammatical and medical sense; depicted as being on the receiving end of other people's actions, including being injured, and being medically treated. There was no footage of dead children, presumably arising from the news convention that to show footage of dead people is a mark of disrespect.
