The subject of the distorted or incorrect representation of social problems and situations on the part of the media is beginning to be noticed more and more by observers and analysts of society, but also by associations and ordinary people. In fact, apart from the different readings or interpretations of the phenomenon, there is now agreement on the fact that the effects of a spiral competition between the public and private services have often ended up by producing emphatic tones, making communicative styles more spectacular, creating an obsessive race for the scoop which has produced undeniably negative effects on the quality of communications as a whole. To pay the price, as it were, are those subjects who more easily lend themselves, because of their objective condition or for the appeal of their image, to becoming the pretext and opportunity for spectacular presentation: children, women, victims of tragic events.

From this viewpoint, children are in the foreground: the ability to intercept the emotions of the viewer, the natural connotation of tenderness that accompanies the image, the immediacy of the expressive characteristics, all contribute to making them the privileged subjects of such a widespread form of communicative "instrumentalisation". An emphasis that seems to increase when children are associated, in the news and in fiction, with painful facts.

In this case, the temptation for the world of communications seems to become irresistible, because there is nothing like a "suffering child", real or imaginary, to draw the attention of the general public. And yet, this temptation becomes really dangerous because it can produce an unfortunate kind of communication that shows a lack of respect from several viewpoints.

In order to study this matter in depth, the Rai Social Action Department, in collaboration with the Radio-television Audience Centre commissioned Censis (the National Statistics Institute) to carry out an analysis survey on the content of 3 months of Rai television programming.

The monitoring of the representation that television gives of children suffering for various reasons, of which the results are presented herewith, shows whether, and to what extent, the public service gives in to or resists such temptation, and if, how, and to what extent, this category of "subjects" is useful for emotional communication that can intercept the deepest feelings (to protect a child), but also the less noble emotions (morbid curiosity for others' suffering).

In fact, it seems that in this case the old theories of the television viewer hypnotised in front of the screen are brought up again: in fact, faced with a general process of disaffection, the cases of crime news involving children seem to draw the attention of a huge audience. And it must be wondered why, in recent times, crime news has been given such honour by the television screen, advancing on the rather marginal role that it had in the past. And why crime news, which is always a question of local facts and, therefore, "micro", has to take an increasingly more central position in the news services.

In this sense, the subject, increasingly more important nowadays, of the newsworthiness of an event, or, if you prefer, in more technical terms, of the so-called agenda setting is reproposed: who decides and why to they decide that crime news with brutal overtones deserves twice as much, if not three times as much, space as, for example, a world conference on the environment, which influences the lives and the health of millions (to tell the truth, of billions) of people? Who decides that the latest genetic discoveries deserve a fifth of the space of the blood thirsty details of a mysterious murder? And why must news be exciting and shocking ("man bites dog")? Is it not enough to give information? The question remains open.