‘Kids are interested in everything’: Krishnan Guru-Murthy and Lizo Mzimba on Newsround at 50
04.04.2022 - 15:03
/ msn.com
De’Graft Mensah, leads the morning bulletin with a piece about World Book Day. This may not be news in the traditional sense, but is justifiable, says Guru-Murthy. “As a parent, I know it’s hugely significant – it’s what kids are talking about that day – so in terms of their world it’s the big story.
” Then there is a report from Ukraine about refugees, especially children, on the border with Poland. This leads nicely into a feature by Marianna Spring, the BBC’s specialist disinformation reporter, about misleading news and how to spot it. Doing a story such as Ukraine for children is not that different from doing any kind of story, says Guru-Murthy.
“You try to explain as much of the history – the Soviet Union and Putin – as you can, briefly and concisely. And you have to show quite a lot of the imagery, certainly the bangs and the disruption, but you would be very careful about the amount of distressing footage of people, especially of children. ”There is a duty of care to the viewer, he says.
While his target audience was eight to 12, there might have been younger children watching; their parents had the right to put them in front of it and for them not to be distressed by the content. “That didn’t mean you couldn’t tackle very serious news or would have to sanitise; we would just explain and contextualise, not scare anyone. It’s the opposite of a lot of news now, especially on the internet, which is driven towards hyping and trying to get clicks.
”In July 2020, the 4pm programme was axed, with the focus moving to the 7. 45am edition, BBC iPlayer and a website of explainers and features, including Happy News (maintaining a Newsround tradition of covering good news as well as bad). The BBC estimates that 2 million
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