Extra than always, brood witness incalculable, now and then traumatizing,
news proceedings on Tube. It seems that violent crime and dreadful information is unabating.
Foreign wars, usual disasters, terrorism, murders, incidents of child mistreatment,
and health check epidemics flood our newscasts daily. Not to mention the grim
wave of new discipline shootings. pene grande www.informazionipene.it

All of this intrudes on the innocent planet of children. If, as psychologists
say, kids are like sponges and absorb all that goes on about them,
how deeply does watching TV news in fact influence them? How watchful act
parents require to exist in monitoring the pour of news hooked on the home, and how can
they locate an approach that works?

To react these questions, we curved to a panel of hardened 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 on the office, Mom is hard
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 resting on
a shooting tear that leaves nine dead.

On "World News Tonight," Peter Jennings reports that a oversized jetliner with
more than 300 passengers crashed in a spinning metal fireball next to a Hong Kong
airport.

On CNN, here's a report in relation to the earthquake in Dud, with 2,000
people killed.

On the Discovery channel, in attendance's a opportune extraordinary lying on hurricanes and the
terror they generate in family. Hurricane Dennis has previously struck, Floyd is
coming.

Finally, they distinguish a limited intelligence tale regarding a roller coaster mishap on 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 exist terrified
by this intimidating hodgepodge of TV news.

What's erroneous with this picture?

"There's a LOT incorrect with it, other than it's not that easily fixable," explanation Linda
Ellerbee, the creator and host of "Nick News," the award-winning information
program geared meant for kids ages 8-13, ventilation on top of Nickelodeon.

"Watching blood and pierce on top of Television is NOT first-class designed for kids and it doesn't do
much to enhance the lives of adults either," says the fasten, who strives to
inform kids about globe proceedings without petrifying them. "We're into
stretching kids' brains and there's nothing we wouldn't cover," as well as
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, caring
children on or after unfounded fears. "During the Oklahoma City bombing, in attendance
were terrible metaphors of children being hurt and killed," Ellerbee recalls. "Kids
wanted to know rider they were safe in their beds. During studies conducted by
Nickelodeon, we establish elsewhere that kids locate the news the most frightening obsession
on TV.

"Whether it's the Gulf War, the Clinton scandal, a downed jetliner, otherwise what
happened in Littleton, you have to reassure your children, in excess of and over another time,
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 lots of planes landed safely!

"My work is to put the information addicted to an age-appropriate context and inferior
anxieties. Then it's actually up and about to the parents to observe what their kids watch
and argue it with them"

Yet a innovative cram 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 agitated look after above?

"Mom's captivating a beating at this point. Where's Dad?" Ellerbee asks.Perhaps next to work,
or living wage disjointedly on or after Mom, before absent altogether.

"Right. Most Moms and Dads are effective as solid as they can since we
live in a society where one proceeds 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 the TV as a babysitter as they're out in receipt of manicures!"
says the 48-year-old anchor.

"Those mothers are struggling to create tops meet and they do it as
they call for aid. I don't believe kids would exist inspection [as much TV] if their
parents were home organizing a touch football game.

"When I require the TV as a babysitter," says Shriver, who leaves thorough TV-
viewing orders behind when roving, "I put on top of a secure tape. I don't mind
that my kids have watched "Pretty Woman" otherwise "My Best Friend's Wedding"
3,000 era. Identification live supplementary afraid 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 budge to supervise her possess family additional directly because her husband,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, became Governor, Shriver
scaled reverse her workload as Contributing Anchor to Dateline NBC and locate up and about
her workplace on home: "You can by no means be alive attentive adequate with your kids," she
says, "because watching violence lying on Tube evidently has a enormous crash lying on
children--whether it's TV news, movies, or else cartoons."

This vision is communal by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent
Psychiatry, which states: ""TV is a authoritative pressure in mounting cost
systems and shaping behavior...studies come across that children may become immune
to the horror of violence; steadily agree to violence as a way to explain troubles;
and remedy to anti-social and aggressive actions, imitating the violence they
observe."

Although here 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 accomplish not wristwatch one Tube at all all through the
week," she notes, "and having a TV in their bedrooms has never been an
option. I have adequate difficulty in receipt of them to perform their homework!" she states
with a laugh. "Plus the partly 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 possess Box's Videocassette recorder's and video sports event in their
bedroom," the cram comments. Moreover, brood ages 8-18 actually expend an
average of three hours and 16 notes watching TV daily; only 44 notes
reading; 31 notes by the computer; 27 notes live tape sports meeting;
and a measly 13 notes using the Internet.

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

"After feast these days, we play a game, after that my kids are in divan, analysis
their books. There's no instance in that day designed for any Tube, but resting on weekends, when
they're allowable to watch a Disney video, Sesame Street, Barney, The Brady
Bunch, otherwise Pokemon."

Beyond in safe hands entertainment, Shriver has eliminated totally the option of her
children inspection news proceedings unfolding survive on top of TV: "My kids," she notes, "do
not fob watch several Tube news, extra than Nick News," in its place if her children
with Time for Kids, [Teen Newsweek is also available], Highlights, and
newspaper tops discussed over dinner.

"No theme be supposed to subsist 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 sunset news summary, definitely disagrees with a censored
approach to news-watching: "I have two kids--Elizabeth is currently 24 and
Christopher is 21-- and they were permitted to watch as a great deal Television news and
information anytime they wanted," says the attach. A solid believer in
kids thoughtful the world in the region of them, he adapted his bestselling book,
The Century, designed for children ages 10 and big in The Century for Young People.

No downside to kids watching news? "I don't know of any downside and I've
thought in relation to it many period. I old to worry concerning my kids' exposure to
violence and obvious sexual characteristics in the movies. Like most parents, I set up that although
they were exposed to violence earlier than I would have liked, I don't feel
they've been pretentious by it. The jury's unmoving not in resting on the sex.

"I have exposed my kids to the violence of the world--to the bestiality of
man--from the incredibly opening, by the side of age 6 otherwise 7. I didn't try to secrete it. I on no account
worried regarding putting a curtain flanked by them and reality, since I not at all felt
my family 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 blameless pawns--
and in relation to what we could do as a family to create the world a supplementary 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 suitable meant 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 on 6:30 when my children are watching?' My
answer is: 'Madam, that's not my problem. That's YOUR problem. It's
absolutely awake to the parent to monitor the pour of news addicted to the home."

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

"Watching Television through dinner is unforgivable," he exclaims, explanation that
he for eternity insisted that his family hang around pending he inwards home on or after anchoring
the reports. "You're sew true they waited...even when my kids were tiny, they
never ate pending 7:30 otherwise 8 pm. Then we would sit with no melody, rejection Television. Why
waste such a golden opportunity? Watching TV at mealtime robs the family of
the essence of the dinner, which is communion and exchange of ideas. I indicate,
God, stipulation the dinner desk is anything, it's a place to learn good manners and
appreciation intended for two of the furthermost equipment in life--food and drink."

Jennings is similarly plain in his view of junk Television and believes parking
kids by the side of the tube creates dull minds: "I believe by TV as a babysitter is a
terrible design since the damn TV is awfully tranquilizer, drug-like. Mindless
TV makes for passive human being beings--and it's a distraction as of homework!

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

Adds Ellerbee: "TV is seductive and is predestined to exist. The rigid, understandable detail 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, Box plays a larger responsibility in
children's lives currently than always previous to. Kids watch Television an usual of14 to 22
hours for every week, which accounts for at slightest 25 percent of their gratis time.

"Dateline NBC" Anchor Jane Pauley, intensely hush-hush, declined an interview
to talk about 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 printed answer, she arranged that kids need to exist enhanced confined
from the offensive of violence: "I was a visitor by a municipal elementary educate
not extended before, and was invited to peek in lying on a fourth-grade class resting on 'current
events.' The assignment had been to watch the news and write concerning one of
the stories. Two kids picked the fatal harass lying on 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 gore 'News at 11' station in city. 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 information clients. And scandalous Box is extremely unhealthy designed for kids."

On this point, Ellerbee eagerly agrees:"I actually perform suppose the first
amendment STOPS at your front entry. You are the boss by the side of home and parents
have each true to monitor 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 appallingly violent, sit down downward and DEFUSE it. Talking
makes the ghosts run...and kids can smash from beginning to end their scared feelings." pene piu grosso http://www.informazionipene.it