Articoli

Ilana Ele
ilana.elea@gu.se
Nordicom /The International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media
University of Gothenburg

Tv for children:
an ethical, regulatory and educational issue
Television still remains the most widely used mass medium for children worldwide.
Watching TV is part of the everyday life of children and has many implications for their behavior, worldview, cognitive and emotional worlds, for their cultural, social and educational development. (Lemish, 2013). However, media contents seldom have a direct or
sole influence on our actions. Children can
get conceptions and feelings from the TV,
but they are mixed with all the other conceptions, norms, values, feelings and experiences
they have already acquired and are acquiring
from their own practice and from their family,
school, peers groups, community. (Feilitzen,
2010). To think ethically about content/when
creating content is fundamental. We understand that children are a special audience and
deserve, for being so, to be protected for potentially harmful contents. Children can learn so
much from audiovisual programmes, and it is
important to encourage the production and
airing of high quality content for them, respecting pluralism, cultural diversity and inclusion. Childrens voices should be heard and
viewed on TV from their contexts, countries,
accents, abilities, disabilities, and dreams as
well as from other cultural contexts than their
own. (Kolucki & Lemish, 2011). The TV should
be a place for all.

Freedom of expression vs. media

regulation?
Some say that speaking about regulation
of television compromises freedom of expression. It is important to clarify that this is not
the case. Freedom of expression is fundamental
but cannot fail to ensure freedom of information, plurality and diversity. Otherwise, who has
the freedom of expression? The owners of the
media? The political or commercial forces? The
global media conglomerates?
Today, the 7 largest media conglomerates
AOL Time Warner, Viacom, News Corp, Bertelsmann, Vivendi, Universal, Sony, and Walt Disney control a substantial portion of the global
audiovisual segment (Media Database, 2013).
The topics of media regulation and ownership
have emerged as a major issue in regional and
global trade negotiations. How to balance the
protection of children while respecting the fundamental right to freedom of expression and
freedom of information? TV regulation is seen,
from this perspective, as a way to promote balance between the voices, images and messages that are spread. The international reference
in matters of the protection of children is the
Convention on the Rights of the Children, approved by the United Nations in 1989, nowadays
signed by most countries of the world. Article 13

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states that every child shall have the right to
freedom of expression, this right shall include
freedom to seek, receive and impart information ()Article 17 calls upon to ensure that
the child has access to information and material from a diversity of national and international sources, especially those aimed at the promotion of his or her social, spiritual and moral well-being, and physical and mental health.
It also states that the creation of appropriate
guidelines to protect children from information
and material that is injurious to their well-being is needed.
Potential harmful content for children
As an example of potential harmful content on television, we can highlight the correlation between television viewing and violence
(von Feilitzen, 2009; von Feilitzen, 2010), or television viewing and obesity as a growing concern (Ekstrm & Tufte, 2007; Bond et.al, 2013).
There is an unprecedented childhood obesity crisis in which 20% of children living either in the
United States or in Europe are obese. Most televised food advertising targeted at children fall
into one of 5 categories: sugar cereals, candy
& sweets, salty snacks, soft drinks and fast food
restaurants (World Health Organization, 2013).
There are no direct and immediate effects, that
means, the fact of being exposed to unhealthy
advertising will not make children necessarily
obese, since obesity is associated to other factors
in childrens lives. (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2011; Lemish, 2006). However, accumulated
evidence about the food advertising is quite convincing about its high risk factor (Ofcom, 2004).
Is it ethical to target children on TV advertising,
especially when the goal is to sell products that
compromise childrens health?

Quality content for children

To think about ethics is also related to offering high quality content for children. Countries
can invest, especially through their public broadcasting services, in domestically produced programmes and international programmes, content
for all ages and offer a range of genres, as information, drama, fiction, documentaries, fairytales,
news, science, sports, music, education, entertainment not only cartoons produced by global conglomerates (Enli, 2013; Enli & Staksrud, 2013;
Petterson, 2013; Rydin & Sjberg, 2010).
Ragna Wallmark, former producer of children programmes and as Head of children departments at SVT (Swedish Television) as well
as UR, (Swedish Educational Broadcasting
Company), defends the National television with
domestic content. She says:
If you never see anyone you can really identify with, you might want to be someone else.
To be seen is one of the most fundamental
needs and to be seen on television is to be
seen in the world today.
When you read a script or watch a program
ask yourself: Is the child in focus?
Is it about or with children?
Can I identify the aspects mentioned above?
The UNICEF publication Communicating with children (Kolucki & Lemish, 2011)
brings a rich theoretical and practical framework about how to produce quality and inclusive tv for children, including international examples and case studies.
Tv regulation
Regarding TV regulation, there are mainly 3 regulatory frameworks (Palzer & Scheuer,
2003): Public regulation, as a traditional reg-

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ulatory system. The public authority is the regulator. Self regulation, when tv producers draw
up their own regulations and take full responsibility for monitoring them through codes of
conduct and guidelines. Co-regulation, when
the public authority, the broadcasters and the
civil society cooperate. Compulsory age classification and content description are used. TV
regulation, in the context of protection of children, means laws, watersheds, warnings, ratings, the ombudsmen, technological filtering
(Aroldi, 2003; Frau-Meigs, 2003). But TV regulation also includes efforts to offer contents
of high quality and diversity to children, especially locally produced programmes (homegrown content), by means of broadcasting quotas, codes of media conducts (Blumenau, 2011;
Enli, 2008; Lustvik, 2013).
Public Regulation
To mention some examples, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Canada have prohibited
commercial sponsorship of childrens television programmes; Ireland has banned the use
of cartoon characters to promote foods; and
France has passed legislation requiring healthy
messages to accompany advertisements for
foods and beverages high in sugar, salt or artificial color. (Bond et all, 2013). British regulatory framework bans advertising for foods high
in sugar, fat and salt around childrens programmes (Steemers, 2012). The ban is based
on the primary argument that children do not
have cognitive abilities to distinguish between
persuasive and entertainment messages.
In Sweden (Radio and Television Act, 2010),
commercial advertising in television broadcasts
may not be designed to attract the attention of
children under the age of 12; may not appear

immediately before or after a programmes directed to children; individuals or characters

who play a prominent role in programmes that
are primarily aimed at children may not appear in commercial advertising.
Self-regulation
Self-regulation is voluntary. In this model, the media industry defines its own rules and
compromises regarding the communication
with children. Advertising is often self-regulated. An actual polemical debate regarding the effectiveness of self-regulatory initiatives is related to advertising of (unhealthy) food for children. Self-regulatory programmes aimed at
reducing unhealthy food advertising to children through self-regulation do not seem to be
working well (Matthews, 2008). Research about
initiatives in Australia (Revee, 2013), Canada
(Asquith, 2009), Spain (Fernndez-Martnez & Lpez-de-Ayala-Lpez, 2011) and USA
(Kunkel et al, 2009) comment that despite industry claims that food marketing to children
would be limited to healthier food or that licensed characters (especially from childrens
cartoons) would be used carefully, advertising
of non-core foods (high in salt, sugar and fat)
continues, including at times when many children watch television. As Palzer and Scheuer
(2003) attest, since the state is not involved in
this form of regulation, public authority sanctions cannot be imposed.
Co-regulation
The system of co-regulation means that it is
the industry itself and the government together that are responsible for measures to protect

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young people against harmful influences from
the media. Kijkwijzer, the name of the Dutch
rating system in use since early 2001, can be
used as a successful example of cooperation
between public authorities, the media industry and the civil society (Ofcom, 2008: 8). The
rating of media products is done by coders employed by media producers or distributors. The
Netherlands Institute for the Classification of
Audiovisual Media (NICAM) is responsible for
the classification of audiovisual products. Kijkwijzer provides information about the potential harmful effects of movies, videos, DVDs and
television programmes including music videos.
The rating system consists of 2 elements: age
classification and content descriptors. The content descriptors, presented as icons, refer to violence, sex, fear, drug and alcohol abuse, discrimination and coarse language. Advertising
is not classified (Palzer & Scheur, 2003; Aroldi, 2003). Other positive examples of co-regulation within the European Union and Australia
are presented by Schulz & Held (2006).
Media and Information Literacy
Ethics and TV regulation are important, but
with media content travelling across national
borders and with regard to the use of other kinds
of media content (internet, advergames), it is
recommended that those actions be combined
with Media and Information Literacy. Children
and youth can learn how to assess information
and evaluate TV programmes, examining and
understanding how media content is produced,
exploring issues of representation, diversity and
plurality of media and information. A combination between protection (through TV and media
regulation) and empowerment (through Media
and Information Literacy) is needed.

The term Media and Information Literacy

(MIL) was coined by UNESCO in 2011, and it
refers to the competence to access media and
information; analyse media and information
from a critical approach towards media content and create information and communication in a variety of contexts.
The UNESCO curriculum (Wilson & al.,
2011; Comunicar, 2012; Carlsson, U. & Culver, S.H., 2013) offers guidelines for teachers
and teacher trainers about how to work with
key competences in different grades at school
in order to achieve these goals and it can be
adapted for the work in daycare and with really young kids as well. Media, information, freedom of expression, library, news, computer, internet, digital, cinema, games, television and
advertising are seen as topics to be included in
educational approaches at school in order to
empower children since early ages, to act as informed citizens and creative communicators.
To summarize, the MIL ultimate goal is to
develop both critical understanding and active
participation; enable young people to interpret
and make informed judgments as consumers of
media and information and to encourage them
as producers of media and information to become more powerful participants in society.
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