Civil Society, Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

BRAZIL: Agency Seeks More and Better Media Coverage of Children and Youth

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jul 20 2005 (IPS) - A news agency that neither writes nor distributes news is nonetheless responsible for promoting more comprehensive media coverage of issues related to children and youth in Brazil, and has even contributed to the adoption or improvement of social policies.

The initial idea behind the News Agency for Children’s Rights (ANDI) was to issue guidelines to journalists and media outlets – suggesting particular topics and sources, without attempting to dictate the focus and content of coverage – instead of putting out press releases like a traditional news agency.

Journalist Ambar de Barros, the agency’s founder, began to propose topics to the media in 1990, before ANDI was officially established in Brasilia in August 1991. In so doing, she told IPS, she brought together “two worlds that were unfamiliar with each other: the world of journalism and the world of non-governmental organisations (NGOs).”

“I knew of NGOs that were doing wonderful work, but they viewed the media with mistrust,” recalled Barros, who is now a member of the ANDI board of directors and the coordinator of the UNESCO office in Sao Paulo.

One of the topics highlighted by ANDI in the early years that caused the greatest impact in the media was the plight of children working in sawmills in the Brazilian Amazon. Some of the youngsters had fingers cut off in the course of the work, and the compensation provided by their employers was a pair of jeans.

Barros has no doubt that media coverage played a major role in bringing about government policies implemented since the 1990s to fight child labour, the sexual exploitation of minors, and other violations of the rights of children and youth.

The guidelines put forward by ANDI gradually expanded and diversified, with their focus extended to “the search for solutions,” as opposed to merely exposing problems, she noted.

Interest in children’s issues grew in the Brazilian press, and ANDI began to systematically monitor coverage through a news clipping service. During its first year, the service recorded 10,700 stories related to children and youth. By 2002, that figure had risen to almost 100,000 stories in 50 newspapers and 10 magazines.

Last year there were 161,700 news stories, and the number of newspapers had increased to 61. The significant expansion in coverage over the last two years is largely due to the priority placed on social issues by the leftist government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and various local governments, said Veet Vivarta, the director-editor of ANDI.

The figures compiled by the clipping service, with an analysis of trends and the subjects addressed, are gathered annually in the Children in the Media Report distributed to journalists and institutions that deal with children and youth.

The agency also issues a daily bulletin to thousands of journalists with guidelines and reviews, as well as a regular newsletter that includes statistics, experiences and information on relevant social actors, as a means of promoting coverage. Issues related to adolescents and special supplements for children and youth are given specific emphasis.

In association with other institutions, ANDI sponsors journalism prizes for news stories on children and adolescents. In addition, it has awarded the title of “Journalist Friend of Children” to 327 reporters since 1997. The most recent group of 42 honourees were presented with certificates at a ceremony in Brasilia on Jul. 12.

While ANDI welcomes the growth in coverage of issues related to children and youth, it has come to increasingly shift its concern from quantity to quality.

In 2001, O Liberal, a newspaper published in the northern Brazilian state of Pará, stood out for the second year in a row for having published the second largest number of stories on children and adolescents – a remarkable achievement for a local publication with limited circulation.

Nevertheless, the newspaper failed to merit special recognition from ANDI, because a qualitative analysis dropped it to 38th place, explained Marcus Fuchs, the agency’s director of planning.

The vast majority of the youth-related stories in O Liberal were reports of violent crimes committed by minors. But the newspaper’s editors acknowledged this weakness in their coverage, and asked ANDI for support to improve it, Fuchs told IPS.

Providing training through seminars for journalists and journalism students, disseminating media analysis and research, promoting coverage through its guidelines and monitoring coverage through its clipping service are the core strategic areas in which ANDI works today.

In addition, the agency’s activities are also carried out by the local agencies in ten states that make up the ANDI Brazil Network, which is directed by the Brasilia-based national organisation.

In 2003, the ANDI Latin America Network was created with the participation of institutions in nine other countries, including Social Journalism in Argentina and the Foundation for a New Journalism in Colombia. In some countries there are two organisations involved in the project.

This network has proven that ANDI’s methodology can be adapted to countries with very different realities in terms of both journalism and the recognition of children’s rights, noted Fuchs.

It has also made it possible to undertake a comparative analysis in six countries. In four of them – Argentina, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Paraguay – violence was the number one subject of news stories involving children and youth, observed Ulisses Lacava, executive coordinator of the Latin American network.

The same was true in Brazil in 1996, when violence ranked first in youth-related news coverage, and education ranked fifth. But today education has moved up to first place, reflecting the evolution in Brazilian journalism over recent years.

Of the 39 topics specifically monitored by the network, many are still “hidden issues”, accounting for less than one percent of news stories. These include infant mortality in Argentina, “which previously wasn’t a problem but became one after the economic crisis,” AIDS in Bolivia, drugs and sexual abuse in Venezuela, and child labour in Guatemala, noted Lacava.

There is also little mention of legislation in these other countries, since many have still not adopted laws like the Statute on the Rights of Children and Adolescents passed by Brazil in 1990, he added.

For his part, journalist Fernando Rosetti, director of the group responsible for seeking out private sector funding for ANDI’s initiatives, maintains that the agency exercises “a major influence on journalism” by promoting press coverage of new subjects, higher quality journalism, the use of a wider range of sources, and the expansion of coverage to media like radio and the Internet.