Negotiating News Childhoods: News Producers, Visualized Audiences and the Production of the Children's News Agenda

This paper, based on a case study of the production of the BBC children's news programme, Newsround, examines the importance of professionals' views of children's “childhood” within programme production. Approaching media production with this concern brings sharply into view how understandings of the young audience develop within journalists' culture. Further, the case study approach reveals how news practices inscribed with professionals' understandings of children's cognitive abilities, their interests and relationship to the news programme shape the production of the BBC children's programme. The paper concludes, on the basis of this study, that the news agenda conditioned in this process restricts children's access to knowledge, information and debate about important adult affairs.