readers have seen powerful but harrowing reporting on the dire situation our children are in, with stories about malnutrition in the Eastern Cape. These matter not only because they detail the most marginalised and most vulnerable having their rights further violated, but because if we are to have a future as a country, we have to focus on our children.
, they only account for 10% of news coverage. In addition, the voices of children are marginalised, making up just 1% of stories. In the case of women, underrepresenting them perpetuates their inequitable power in society and indirectly supports the notion that women aren’t as involved in politics as men.
In addition to raising awareness — in which we highlight a story every week that has reported well on children, and one that has failed to respect children’s rights — we wanted to encourage new and fresh ways of thinking about reporting on children. To this end, we will be running our honours-level course on reporting on children with Wits Journalism to help improve journalists’ skills in this area.
Any problem we don’t fix for our children today will make the problems of tomorrow exponentially worse.