news watershed?

[monstersmummy]

Does anyone else think that there should be a watershed on what images are shown on the news?

I was horrified by the pictures of soldiers on fire on the GMTV news this morning and was just about to switch over to another channel when my 2 year old noticed. he has been upset ever since and has just settled now. he kept saying man fire mummy fire hot. He knows that fire is hot and he knows that ppl are not supposed to be on fire and for them to think that it is ok to show those images appals me. I thought the floating dead bodies in New Orleans was horrific enough without this as well. And lets not mention the effect that the London bus bomb had on him. I don't drive so need to use public transport. needless to say that has become a bit of a problem.

I am aware of the publics need to see such things BUT at a reasonable hour please!

And there's more!

I think the news is my DD's history. I want her to be aware of what's going on around her as she grows up, so that she can put things in an historical context, and not just live in a vacuous local bubble as I did for most of my childhood and teens. Just because something doesn't affect her directly now, doesn't mean to say that it won't in the future, and that she shouldn't learn to feel empathy with the immediate victims.
I'll stop now.

I want dd to be aware of her history and what's going around her as she grows up too - but only once she's capable of assimilating the images that she sees, and only once she's old enough to have some sort of understanding of how the world works. She's 4, it's a very impressionable age; she understands that Little Red Riding Hood contains nasty things but she also knows it's just a story. She doesn't yet understand that there are people in the world who put bombs on trains or fly planes into buildings - and I want to keep it that way until she's old enough to be able to put that into some kind of context.

I feel that there's enough loss of innocence in our children these days as it is, without deliberately adding to it, and that's one of the reasons why I won't be inflicting that on my child just yet. She's a child, and she deserves to be treated like one for a little while before she has to be exposed to such adult topics.

Sorry but at 5 and 8yrs I don't think my kids need to see people jumping to their deth from burning buildings, or people on fire. They see the newsround version of event s and I think thats more than enough info for them.

I have only recently allowed DS 8yrs to watch stuff like Casuality and they never get to see East Enders but thats just because its full of cr*p . I think kids should be proteced and sheilded from the big bad world. Plenty time to experience it, so for now they can pretend to be explorers, spacemen, fairies and pixes, rather than terrorists, gunmen, strippers or crack whores .

Skribble and batters, what sort of age do you think newsround is suitable from? My ds is 6 1/2 and I was thinking about when "ordinary" children's TV programmes (as opposed to the children's channels that he is limited to at present) might appeal to him. I didn't have a TV until I was 13, so have no idea about these things!

From about 6/7 yrs I suppose. Watch it with them at first to judge their reaction, they may be left with lots of questions they want to ask or worry about what they see.