Some of this may be due to journalistic bias. However, there is a deep-seated difficulty that man-made and natural disasters can generate more striking images than the fact that someone has negotiated a peace settlement or won a Nobel Prize.
Doing anything about this bias directly is problematic. Perhaps we should just hope that our work to produce greater understanding will, in the end, be more effective than these images. Sometimes, however, the impact of particular news stories on the children needs to be addressed.
This issue has attracted more attention with the terrorist attacks over the past five years (although the distress many young children experienced as a result of those events may have had more to do with the responses of adults around them than the actual images on TV). Naturally, concern has focused on children's distress - the most pressing issue - rather than on any influence on their understanding of other cultures. But we must be alert to the effect of such stories on their understanding and gently explore whether this is also part of what they are thinking.
We also need to be aware of the fact that children are 'consuming' news all the time, and use exchanges with them to see what ideas are emerging. There may be positive stories to which we can draw their attention. Perhaps in the wake of some disaster, people from the community affected, rather than outside agencies, have been shown helping young children. Such events can be explored on the basis of things children themselves have remembered or, perhaps, brief video recordings of those items.
