In pursuit of sensations deontology is neglected

The most often violations of the professional deontology in covering subjects about children include the revealing of details that can help identity the children who are suspects, victims or witnesses, accentuation of the dramatic and tragic subjects and treatment of cases when children are victims of physical and sexual violence, on the wrong side of the law or involved in tragedies or conflicts as sensations, shows a monitoring performed by the Association of Independent Press (API). API executive director Petru Macovei has told Info-Prim Neo the monitoring revealed that many media outlets prefer to cover subjects about murders, sexual abuses and other tragedies involving children. “In fact, these materials often violate elementary deontological norms such as the protection of the identity of the child-victim and the presumption of innocence. The situation is worsened by officials of the police, the prosecutor’s office, hospitals and other state institutions, who do not protect the child’s identity and easily provide the press with information about minors who are victims of physical, sexual or other kinds of abuses,” said Petru Macovei. In order to improve the existent practices of covering sensitive issues involving children, used by journalists and the press services of public institutions, the Association of Independent Press organized a two-day training seminar. API program coordinator Irina Lazur stated for Info-Prim Neo that experts will teach the participants in the seminar to write materials in accordance with the deontological norms. The participants are engaged in different debates and exercises. For example, the press officers learn to make a press release more attractive without violating the children’s rights, while the journalists using the press release learn to write a material of social interest with impact, in accordance with the professional deontology. Ion Bunduchi, executive director of the Electronic Press Association (APEL), has told the Agency that the mass media representatives often do not help the victims, but harm them when they treat sensitive subjects involving children. “The news portals contain mainly shocking news about minor mothers, raped children and fights between teens that give details like the place or birth and name of the protagonist. We will discuss this problem during two days and maybe the press officers and journalists from now on will review twice the information before making it public,” he stated. The training seminar “Ethical norms of writing and documenting articles about the situation/rights of children” involves representatives of the press services of such public institutions as the Ministry of the Interior, the General Police Commissariat, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Labor, Social Protection and Family, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Center for Combating Corruption and Economic Crime, the Placement Center for Minors, and the Center for Human Rights. There were also invited 18 journalists representing local and regional media outlets. The training seminar forms part of the Strengthening Journalistic Practices of Covering Sensitive Issues Project that is implemented by the API and financed by UNICEF.