RAI - Social Action and Public Liaison Department

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title SOCIAL PROGRAMMING

"Au revoir les enfants"
Rai: children and the representation of pain on TV

2. Newscasts and Programmes: between balanced reports and risky off shoots

Right from the start it was clear that the language and the style of expression used was that of a service or newscast or programme dealing with suffering children, even from the title. Often it is the title, in fact, that indicates the direction, that reveals the attitude: is it a "dry", informative title, or is it full of adjectives that create an emotional atmosphere? Does it evoke tragedy, mystery, an outbreak of the absurd, does it make us tremble just at hearing it pronounced or seeing it written? Or does it describe a fact that has happened with objectivity, leaving it up to us to put what we learn from it into a context, emotional or otherwise?

On the whole there is a prevalence of rather dry, balanced descriptive titles: but there are some "noteworthy" exceptions: this is the case of titles like "Giuliano, reduced to a vegetable" or "Childhood denied" or, as regards the Samuele Lorenzi murder, "Massacred in the cot", which dramatize the description of the news. Or titles like "the mysterious death of little Lucretia" that underline the mystery that envelops the event; or also titles that explicity sollicit pity and human compassion ("The drama of the Chernobyl children").

If we consider what coverage the subject is given by newscasts and programmes, it is clear, first of all, that, as can be expected given the subject of the analysis, most of the information is transmitted during the newscasts (77.6%, tab. 1), equally distributed among the three channels: 26.9% and 26.6% respectively on Tg1 and Tg2, and 21.6% on Tg3 (tab. 2). However, a good 25% of units analysed are composed of transmissions dedicated to in-depth studies (10,2%) or services (10%), important among which are La vita in diretta, (which represents 8.5%) and even an albeit residual 2.2% of entertainment programmes (tab. 1 again). This leads to the supposition that children in painful situations have been spoken of not only linked to criminal facts, but that the the subject has also been dealt with in contexts of in-depth studies. However, it is necessary to bear in mind that the analysis of March and April is considerably inluenced by the Cogne event, which, as we will see, represents a particular case: although the fact happened at the end of January, the media "trail" of the event was much longer and continued, apart from the whole of the month of February - which is the subject of a specific in-depth studiy of this research - also for the months of March, and to a lesser extent, April: in these two months almost 50% of the news analysed regarded Samuele's murder, and it is not by chance that in the month of March 67.5% of all the analysis units concentrated on it, as compared with 32.5% in April.

The channel newscasts in which children and pain were most spoken of are, in this order, Tg1, Tg2 and Tg3, evenly distributed, while noticeable differences can be seen between Rai1 (12.9%) on one hand, Rai2 and Rai3 on the other (3.3% and 1.6), and the "specialist" channels (Rai Educational and TSP, both 0.2%) (tab. 3).

A subject at the centre of attention

In the representation of painful episodes, when children are involved there is the tendency to give certain importance to the matter, and not to permit it to be simply a part of the "mix" of so many tragic events of crime news, giving it a great deal of space on television. The time dedicated to treating the subject, in fact, is on average rather long both in the in-depth programmes and in the newscasts, consdiering that only 12.5% last less than 2 minutes, 68% last between 2 and 10 minutes and 19.5% more than 10 minutes (tab. 4); this last figure corresponds to about 20% of programmes - including both in-depth study and entertainment programmes - which, as has been seen, have dealt with the subject. Also the time bands¹ of the programmes do not present much disproportion, with just a slight concentration in the first two, showing the importance that has been given to this type of news (tab. 5). This is widely confirmed by the fact that when we speak of children in unpleasant or even dramatic situations, this is not done marginally, but on the contrary, it is pratically always chosen (in almost 98% of cases) as one of the main subjects or even the central subject (respectively in 63.5% and 34.4% of cases, tab. 6).

¹ The viewing time band, indicated in 2000 by the Audience Centre for Radio-television Information for Guarantees in Communications, represents an indicator that can establish a relationship between the time of maximum audience of each of the television channels. Calculation of this indicator is based first of all on the choice of the stations to schedule a programme according to the presumed audience. In this way, the introduction of the audience time bands allows for unification of the analysis of the times of the broadcasts for all the channels. Six audience time bands have been identified: band 1 is that of most audience (it must be borne in mind that band 6 represents an audience 10 times less than band 1).

Examining specific characteristics of the news that is reported, it can first of all be noticed that in most cases, in the two months under examination, very small children were the subject: 57.2% regarding children between 3 and 5 years old, reaching 63.5% if we consider a wider range, from new born babies to 5 year olds (tab. 7). This figure is relatively influenced by the age of Samuele Lorenzi, who was very often present in the newscasts of the period: in fact, if a "corrective" is applied, eliminating the news regarding him, the 0-5 year-old group is still the most represented, with 61.5%. If this fact, represented on one hand by a simple given truth - that in the period analysed painful episodes involving very small children did happen - on the other hand, it is impossible to avoid supposing that their massive presence must be both the consequence of a well-known psychological mechanism in which the smaller the victims of tragic events (murders or natural disasters, wars or disease, material or moral degradation), the stronger their impact, creating a feeling of injustice and compassion for the destruction of innocence, the "childhood denied", as one of the titles referred to in fact says.

Boys are mostly referred to, in 61.8% of cases, while groups of both sexes regard 22.1%, and only 16.2% of cases are concerned with girls (tab. 8). The children are prevalently Italian (68.1%), while 9.8% regard foreign children resident in Italy (who could be called "adopted Italians"), but foreigners are often the subject, too (17.2%) (tab. 9). These figures take on a certain logic if considered in relationship to the subject treated: war, immigration, living conditions in the developing countries, poverty and adoption represent over 15% of the total of subjects. But murder is certainly the most common subject treated: it is the subject in 47.5% of the newscasts or programmes, a figure that is considerably influenced by the Samuele Lorenzi case. Accidents and disease follow, with 14.2% and 12% (tab. 10). Just as could be expected, in almost 98% of cases children are the victims, although in the remaining 2% they are more often the perpetrators or witnesses (tab. 11).

Newscast and programme services tend to concentrate prevalently on the event itself, which again can be explained by the prevalence of crime news, but in at least 15.3% of cases the wider problems of the context are considered, showing an appreciable attempt to study the questions in more depth; however, there remains another 5.9% that concentrates on "background" (tab. 12).

The overlapping of genres

If the elements supplied by the service carry out, for the most part, an informative function and represent a real advance in knowledge (59.8%), it must be underlined that in almost half of the cases this is not so, either because they are superfluous, or because their only purpose is to give emphasis to the event (respectively 17.5% and 22.7%), a "heavy" number, if we consider that the function of the newscasts and the programmes, whose mission is linked indissolubly and inequivocally, in the first case, to information and in the second to in-depth study (tab. 13). In fact, to speak of the emotional sphere, to construct the news in such a way as to re-awaken sentiment, is a characteristic that we expect to find in fiction: we find this kind of "overlapping of genres", in an exasperated way, in the television coverage of the Samuele Lorenzi murder.

The "weight" of the experts

When children are spoken of, the people interviewed are the parents (45.%), or at the most family members (21.2%), but often neighbours or other witnesses appear. In the role of experts, instead, above all people who for various purposes are involved in the investigations appear: lawyers, doctors, magistrates and members of the police force appear in 92% of the total of cases; considerable space is also given to representatives of the Church, of the school, and to a lesser extent, sociology experts and representatives of the institutions (tab. 14) In any case, many people belonging to many "worlds" are called upon to give not only information on the facts, but also opinions, and an attempt is made to understand and to collect elements for analysis from what they say. The impression that the viewer gets seeing a long line of experts one after the other on the screen is that, in a sense, the news must not be allowed to slip away, it has to be given importance, depth, and who better than psychologists, psychiatrists, or opinion makers of various kinds and types?

Their intervention, however, both in the case of people directly involved and in that of experts, gave extra information only in 58.2% of cases, while for all the others it had only an interpretative function or served "to create a climate", to build up the atmosphere around the event. It is to be noticed that 17.2% of interventions on the part of people involved or of experts called in were, in fact, superfluous, giving no contribution to the advance of knowledge (tab. 15). The sense of the interventions of third parties called upon for various purposes to express their opinions can, in short, be traced back to three macro categories which overlap each other only in part: the most conspicuous (80% of those interviewed) in which the intervention of a member of the family, a neighbour or an expert was useful (because new information was given or because further elements for consideration or interpretation were added), that of the interventions that can be defined "off target" in as much as they have an effect different from that declared (serving to create atmosphere rather than provide elements useful for understanding) and as such they risk even causing harm (almost 30% of the interviews) and lastly those that give the impression of being called on "by mistake": useless interviews in which nothing is said, services showing people who refuse to answer and which it would seem more suitable not to broadcast (about 24%).

The images that are transmitted with the news in no less than 91% of cases are worth being commented upon separately (tab. 16). For that matter the specific nature of the television medium regarding the other two can be traced back exactly to the transmission also of images: if the radio gives the news and the newspaper explains it, TV shows it. However, the audiovisual language, as is known, is a strongly emotional and extremely powerful instrument, since the vision of the images triggers off a series of psychological mechanisms that words alone - addressed to the "left hemisphere of the brain", to the "intellectual" part - are not enough to stimulate. The producers of Japanese cartoons know this very well, and on this knowledge they have built an art and a code of expression (the so-called perceptive salience).

In the images analysed the child hardly ever appears (73%), but when he does he is usually visible personally or presented in photographs of film sequences, and only in 2.3% of cases is his face solarised or made unrecognisable by means of other expedients (tab. 17), however when this is the case, solarisation adequately fulfils its purpose.

No more bloody cradles

If the images that are simply descriptive have a net prevalence, the 24.5% of "dramatising" images (tab. 18) leads to reflection on the tendency to "speculate" on painful situations in general, on one hand, and on the presence of children, who have always been formidable catalysers of attention and of the pietas of the viewers, on the other. Thus the function that the images are supposed to absolve is worth reflection: the prevailing function is the documentary function, which could be called "normal", having the purpose of providing indications supplementary to those given by the spoken word, constituting, therefore, a correct and balanced representation of the fact. However, yet again it must be noticed how, together with the primary function, there are others that are in a certain way, less correct if they are supposed to be images with the purpose of building up a visual background to a criminal news item, or to give more depth to an aspect of reality. This is the emphasising function of 35.3% of the images examined (the soft toys on Samuele's grave, the empty swing), the gratifying indulgence in showing even the most insignificant details, and the 22.8% of images that pause on clothes, objects, places, which have the purpose of representing the human element in the absence of the child (the bicycle abandoned in the garden), or the 10% that represent nothing less than a spectacularisation of the news (the movie camera that, not being permitted to show the face, focuses on the tiny hands of a little girl with an incurable disease), without mentioning the images, luckily few, that are superfluous or even morbid, like the image of a cot completely covered in blood (tab. 19).

The "ghost child"

In this way a "ghost child" is represented on the small screen, a child that is not presented, not shown. This is a demonstration of journalistic correctness, in as much as it respects the established self-regulating codes of journalism, in the matter of representing children, of the Treviso Charter. However, in this way the child ends up by being created artificially; this figure contains fears and feelings of human pity, fears and compassion, and he becomes a "place for the soul", a projected dimension, a pure receptacle of what we want to see in him. The images that we have defined as "alarm bell images" (39.3%) have another purpose, however: these are images that are imposed, service after service, and which refer immediately to a determined subject. There are cases of crime stories to which many services are dedicated, like the Cogne murder or the story in which Erica and Omar were involved, or in the case of "hot topics" often reproposed, like, for example, the nude and undernourished African children used to evoke the theme of world hunger. In these cases, specific images are shown, which immediately refer to the subject treated and which have the main function of illustrating the matter being presented (tab. 19).

Also at the spoken level, the description of the event is prevalently balanced, but also in this case, however, that minority of 22.2% of cases in which the event is told in alarmist tones, is significant (tab. 20). Compassion is a rather common characteristic in the report of the event (28.4%), a characteristic that sometimes - fortunately very rarely (3.9% of cases) - transforms into a certain form of gratification in the reporting of a tragic news item, rendered even more tragic by the presence of a child; in these cases there is a kind of morbid pleasure in underlining the most blood curdling aspects, in everyone feeling united by a common sentiment of indignation or shock, astonishment or compassion.

The dangerous tendency to use alarmist language

On the whole as objective a description as possible prevails (tab. 21), although there are a few "slips" as regards atmosphere and dimensions that should not characterise programmes more properly dedicated to information, such as newscasts or specials, or in-depth study programmes. The analysis shows a substantially adequate representation of the events or situations that can be certainly be defined as delicate, both because they are painful or even tragic, and because they are concerned with "sensitive subjects", especially children, whom one would like to see associated with joy, vitality, innocence and, more than anything else, to see respect for their right to life, to dignity, and finally the right to the fulfilment of the potential of a person taking his first steps in life.

However, there exists a segment, a certain minority, of "television behaviours" that ought to be more severely checked and which risk getting out of hand precisely in the case of events that, for their delicate nature, deserve to be treated with the greatest caution possible. The way in which the Cogne crime was treated is an obvious example (tab. 20).

Tab. 1 - Children and pain on TV - Newscasts and programmes broadcast by the Rai (March- April): programme category
	%
Newscasts	77,6
In-depth programmes	10,2
Entertainment programmes	2,2
Service programmes	10,0
Total	100,0