Often MAD1 nominations from Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) are about media identifying child victims or perpetrators, which is illegal and almost always not in the best interests of the children involved. It is perhaps ironic then that this article does not identify the ‘children’ involved, but they are incorrectly identified as children. The front page of the Daily Sun (15/02/2012) featured a picture and byline “In their school uniforms: the kids bust for murder!” These ‘kids’ are in fact aged 19 to 21.
The ages of the “children” are referred to in the story entitled “Bust in the Classroom” (15/02/2012, p. 2).
It would seem that those involved in the production of this story were either unaware that a child is defined in Section 28 (3) of the South African constitution as a person under the age of 18, or as is more likely the case, trying to use the fact that scholars were allegedly involved in the murder to create a sense of shock in the readers.
Nelson Mandela once said, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way it treats its children”. And as the statement suggests and like canaries in a coal mine, children are often used to gauge how we as a society are doing or performing. Children who murder do not bode well for our future as a result, the story in question creates a deeper sense of shock in the reader.
This item seemingly attempts to play up the drama of the situation as it details how “Eastern Cape cops marched into classrooms in Centane and Butterworth on Monday and arrested and handcuffed a schoolgirl and four schoolboys in front of their classmates!” Later it refers to the incident as “The drama …”
This appears to be the formula for this article and it seems to have worked considering it got front page coverage. But in this case, it is simply erroneous to call the suspects children. Doing so also stigmatises children more broadly as being out of control as the suspects are described as “cold-blooded killers”. And later it would seem that they are rather shallow as “Money was withdrawn and used to buy clothes.”
MMA would like to encourage the Daily Sun to uphold the central tenet of journalism, accuracy, and consider the harm that stories can cause through stereotyping children.
1. On a weekly basis, MMA highlights cases of good practice, where the media has promoted the rights and welfare of children, otherwise referred to as “GLADs”, as well as instances where the rights and welfare of children have been compromised through irresponsible media coverage, referred to as “MADs”↩