Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Anti-bullying week on Newsround - Part 2

I've remarked once or twice before that Newsround is showing signs of becoming more diverse-friendly. Sports coverage is noticeably less concentrated on England, and there's more on the other Home Nation teams as well.

The programme is more inclusive of women's sports too. There was excellent coverage of the Women's Football World Cup from China, with Jake sent out there to provide live reports.

Newsround is also thoughtful about showing children from other countries. On Saturday we saw Presspacker Julia explain how Thanksgiving is celebrated by American families. Last Wednesday, half way through Anti-bullying week, Adam reported from a Japan about how bullying is different there, and why Japanese children find it very difficult to talk about:

Adam: Well it seems that Japanese school children are under loads of pressure. And even getting people to talk about the issue is pretty difficult. So it looks like the problem of bullying won't be solved in this country for a while yet.

Newsround's web report claims that Japanese people find it a bit rude to say the word bullying in public. This was quite an interesting report because, here in Britain, Newsround doesn't use some words on air. Any regular Newsround viewer might gain the impression that being lesbian or gay is unmentionable.

So although Newsround is more diverse-friendly than it used to be, it looks like the problems of prejudice and discrimination won't be solved for a while yet.
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Coming soon: Whatever happened to 11 Million Takeover Day?

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