Today, Monday, the Independent High Authority for Audiovisual Communication issued a practical guide for media dealing with children’s issues. This guide aims to strengthen the capacities of journalists with regard to respecting children’s rights and media coverage of their issues.
According to a statement issued by the authority, this practical guide includes, in its electronic version, the obligations and responsibilities borne by the audio-visual media towards the child, in addition to the general standards of media handling of children’s rights, whether in communicating with them or during media interviews and preparing reports related to them.
The guide presents some specific issues for children with disabilities, child victims, child “perpetrators” and children in the context of disasters and terrorism, and the means of dealing with them in the media, as well as the standards for media handling of children’s rights in relation to advertising, the Internet, means of accountability and filing complaints within the framework of the amending role of audiovisual media.
The issuance of this guide falls within the amending role of the Independent High Authority for Audio-Visual Communication, by highlighting the importance of protecting children – especially the protection of their rights – in the audio-visual sector and contributing to the enrichment of audio-visual production directed to this segment of people as well as training journalists and securing pedagogical documents for media coverage for these topics.
In the same report, the authority indicated that it will publish an integrated guide on its website that includes all legal texts related to children’s rights, as well as guidelines for media handling of issues related to children, in addition to a hard copy of the guide to be distributed later to media institutions.
It is noteworthy that this guide was completed in cooperation with the United Nations Children’s Fund “UNICEF”, within the framework of a participatory approach based mainly on organizing workshops and consultations open to all media, professionals and specialists in the field of children’s rights, specialized institutions, associations and organizations active in the field and all those interested in protecting children and their rights .
