Media coverage of issues of children's rights violations in Kenya: case study of nation newspaper and the east African standard newspapers

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Date
2006-09
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Publisher
Kampala International University, College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Abstract
The study aimed to study the media coverage of issues of children's rights violations in Kenya. It employed A quantitative assessment of secondary data was carried out on The Daily Nation and The East African Standard for the period of six months (January 2005 - June 2005). The major recommendation was that media houses should seek to establish objectivity when covering children's issues. They should not portray children always as people who only need to be helped, but rather as people who also contribute actively in the society; from our observation most of the children's coverage was concerning charity functions. The increase of coverage of children's issues in the months after the Children's Bill was passed is an indicator that the two papers paid more attention to children's issues after the passing of the Bill. Children are important members of our society and the Bill should not have been the one to prompt the papers to give children more coverage. Judging from the increase of Hard News items on children by both papers, issues concerning children gained a lot of prominence after the Bill\was passed. As such, they were covered more in form of hard news as- compared to letters to the editor. Both papers allocate substantial amount of space to photographs on children's issues although the Standard allocates more as compared to the Nation.The study showed that there was an increase in the coverage of children's issues in the months after the Children's Bill was passed is an indicator that the two papers paid more attention to children's issues after the passing of the Bill.
Description
A research report for dissertation submitted to the College of Humanities and Social Sciences in partial fulfillment for the a ward of Degree of Bachelor of Mass Communication at Kampala International University
Keywords
Media, coverage, Children, Rights, Kenya
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