TV parental guidelines VS local news

[vmaxnc]

Originally Posted by cb at sea

Usually, a responsible channel will tell you if something "awful" and "un-childworthy" is about to be shown.

Not sure why you'd change the channel....kids pay little attention to the news, until they start to pay taxes!

True, but then the issue becomes "who decides what is unchildworthy"? I think daily news programming is for adults, or at least teens. Younger kids don't understand or need to know about the ugliness around them, IMHO. They can't process a murder in any useful sense. And they need to be kids for as long as possible.

[filihok]

Real life is

[Mictlantecuhtli]

The only thing I've ever heard of on local news that I would want to shield from my children was the Bud Dwyer video -- which was carried unedited (unbelievably!) by a few stations when that happened in 1987.

But that's only one thing, carried by a tiny percentage of stations, in a quarter century.

So, I personally wouldn't worry about it.

[happycatcher86]

Honestly, I explain things like that to my eight year old in terms she can understand and don't shelter her from the things on the news. Child rape, I tell her it's when a grown up hurts a child. Prostitution, when people do inappropriate things with other people for money, and so on. I don't go into details but allow her to understand that there are bad things in this world. In doing so I hope to prepare her for the reality of the world when she grows up and also use things like that to instill morals.