Giving Children a Voice in the Media

The development of a media code of conduct in India is an effort led by The Concerned for Working Children (CWC) in response to concern about the sensationalist and exploitative presentation of children and the lack of representation and validation of children's opinions in the media. According to author Kavita Ratna, the Media Code to Realise Children’s Rights 2005 attempts to bring about a paradigm shift in the media’s approach to children - from that of being recipients of adult benevolence to being viewed as full partners in society.

As stated by the author, existing guidelines and codes of conduct for the media that refer to children and seek to regulate their coverage in the media lack, among other points, a right to information, a right to dignified representation, a right to protection from misrepresentation, and a right to protection from stereotyping. None of the charters or codes highlights the right of children to be ‘producers’ of media in society.
The Media Code to Realise Children’s Rights 2005 was conceptualised as an affirmative protocol. As such, the working draft evolved out of the experiences of children’s groups and adult groups working with children as well as the experiences of international organisations such as Children Now (United Kingdom), Save the Children, Children’s Express (United Kingdom), and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Magic Network. The article states that existing media codes, including those specific to children’s rights, significantly those developed by UNICEF and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), constituted critical background material.

CWC began holding discussions with members of Bhima Sangha - a union of, by, and for working children in Karnataka, facilitated by CWC, with a membership of over 13,000 - and other children, on their exclusion in media and how they would like the media to be. The children’s views were then discussed with media practitioners and adult organisations and finally put in the form of the Media Code to Realise Children’s Rights.

Three primary areas were examined in evolving the working draft of the media code of conduct: children as ‘producers’ of the media; children as ‘users’ of the media; and children as ‘subjects’ of the media. The elaboration of the code suggests some of the following communication strategies:

• Children, irrespective of gender, class, caste, ethnicity, religion and ability, as creators and users of media can produce media for communication among themselves and the rest of the world, creating spaces for children’s expression and opinions of the realities around them.
• Consultation with children in the programming of children’s media results in children having a say in deciding how they are represented and the representation of their issues and realities the way children perceive them.
• Media programming, monitoring and regulation must have a children’s rights perspective that incorporates:
  1. children as subjects rather than objects of the media;
  2. protection of children from misrepresentation and stereotyping; and
  3. their right to privacy, confidentiality and dignity.

In conclusion, the author suggests that, though this code evolved through participation of children, the media and children's rights organisations in an Indian context, its scope may be relevant and applicable globally.