Paediatric trauma and safety in the media: an audit of its coverage in a South African broadsheet

Abstract

Objectives. In view of the high rate of paediatric trauma in South Africa, we investigated how much printed media attention – and of what nature - was given to these incidents, and to the broader subject of child safety.
Methods. Over four months, every article in The Cape Argus and Weekend Argus which pertained to either i) a traumatic incident involving at least one child under the age of 13 or ii) other issues involving child safety, was collected. With each article, the number of columns and pictures published was recorded and used as a gauge of media attention. Traumatic incidents were categorised by cause, and the media attention dedicated to each of these was compared. Articles that did not report a specific incident but related to issues of child safety were categorised by slant and theme. The distribution of the articles by these two classifications was then analysed.
Results. 95 articles met the inclusion criteria: 61 (64%) reported incidents involving paediatric trauma, 29 (31%) were related to child safety and 5 articles (5%) covered both. Of the articles that reported specific incidents, NAIs were the most frequently published (68%) and of these, sexual assault was by far the most written-about cause (52% of total incidents published). Of the 34 articles that were more broadly related to child safety, the mode of slant was ‘criticism of government inaction’ (30%) and the mode of theme was ‘school crime/safety’ (51%). Only one article (3%) focused on parental education of child health and safety.
Conclusions. Media attention given to different causes of paediatric trauma incidents is significantly skewed. More emphasis should be given to MVA in line with paediatric trauma admissions, and there is a need for higher levels of parental education and safety advocacy in the media to lower the incidence of preventable incidents.