Kazakhstan journalists are urged not to make sensation of children's suicide
According to Director of Legal Media Centre Public Foundation Diana Okremova, the workshop is of paramount importance for journalists. "Children's rights turn into a sore and vulnerable point to date, particularly now, when all media burst with plenty of materials about pedophilia and children's suicide. Broad discussion of such details results in rise of suicides among children. For this reason our workshop pursues a goal to inform media about the world statistics and how developed countries fight with this phenomena and why journalists should not make a sensation of children's suicide," she said addressing the participants. "Germany was the first to identify the link between wide coverage of this phenomenon in mass media and de facto rise in suicides among minors. The next outburst of suicides was registered in the U.S and Austria. Experts revealed the so-called "wave imitation", when teenagers attempt to do what they saw on TV or in Internet. The reason of the majority of suicides among children is that they want to be popular, they want to attract adults' attention. A few of them only realize a tragic end of such actions. That is why, many countries of the world prohibit publishing materials about children's suicide in media," Okremova noted and added that UNICEF had developed certain principles of covering such tragedies. "Journalists should not make a sensation of these events . To date Internet has turned into a source of biggest problems both for Kazakhstan and the entire world. Governments are unable to protect children from negative information. They do not know what measures to launch not to breach the freedom of speech and to provide adequate protection from such information," she concluded.
