Children present such a lively, interesting, and ever-evolving subject to blog about what with their cuddly little selves often dressed in colorful and frilly attires, sweet, angelic smiles, and pearls of laughter as they make just about anywhere their playground.
In this regard you can blog about their favorite games, places to go, pets to keep, workouts to do, dealing with finances, friends, teachers, toys, and so on.
Despite our desire to protect our children from harm, this is life and it comes with its fair share of ups and downs that affect children as well. Those include disability, incest, defilements, kidnappings, and so on. You will have to blog about those issues from time to time and despite the fact that bad news sells fast, there are things you cannot do in your haste and effort to present children’s news as some could land you in jail, have you pay astronomical amounts in fines or lose your job.
So when blogging about children this is what you should not do,
- Violate their right to privacy
When reporting about their education, safety, health, privacy, and safety you should write aptly as questions that are up for public debate and investigations.
You should never forget the vulnerability of children when reporting their issues and hide their faces or change their names whenever you are reporting sensitive stories or damaging stories. You can only reveal the identity of the children when the matter is of public interest.
- Everybody, including children has a right of reply whenever someone has accused them of anything and if a child comes forward to tell their side they should not be denied the opportunity. You should also never induce children to share any information with you.
- Never publish any information that has been given by children without verifying the information first. Any verification should be done without endangering the child in any way.
- Always use straightforward, fair, and open means to acquire photos of children. In this regard, you should have the consent of the children or an adult. While at it, avoid sexualized photos as well.
- In case an organization is speaking for children, do not publish any information without first verifying its credentials first. This should be fairly easy as most of them have working websites and belong to larger bodies as well. In most cases the people heading them also have good credentials.
- When reporting on children, it should not always be a knee-jerk reaction to a particular happening but continuous reporting about events that lead to the particular happening.
- Never make any payments to children so as to get information from them. You can only do a payment to the parent or the child only when it has been demonstrated that the money will help the child.
- Do not fail to hear the opinions of the child on the matter and while at it, please remember to put into account their ages and maturity.
- Do not stigmatize children in your reporting and in this regard you should avoid descriptions or categorizations that make people look at them negatively. This includes matters such as rejection, discrimination, psychological harm, lifelong abuse from their surroundings.
- Finally, never misrepresent anything to do with child reporting. You should always be accurate in your reporting and this includes the date, location, age, and gender among others.