KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 2 — There needs to be a balance in the reporting of public interest cases involving children to protect the children’s rights, said Children’s Commissioner Farah Nini Dusuki.
She said children’s rights must always come first before public interest as sensationalising and revealing a child’s identity will only cause long-lasting stigma on the child involved.
She said in most criminal cases involving underaged perpetrators, it is often due to a lack of parental supervision and the family situation of the child.
“Even though they were involved in a crime, we must look at them as children first, this is because children are more amenable to change and chances of rehabilitation is higher so we do not want stigma to attached to the child due to unnecessary publicity,” she said in a press conference by Suhakam today.
She reminded the media that Section 15(2) of the Child Act 2001 or Act 611 explicitly prohibits the media from reporting or publishing images of children involved in legal conflicts, those under protection and rehabilitation, or those beyond control, at any stage of their case.
She said violating the section is a criminal offence.
“For now, no action has been taken against any media or journalists under this section,” she said.
She said in recent months, there were several high profile cases involving children that were sensationalised, which had infringed on the rights of the children involved.
“Even though media reports do not mention the names or publish the faces of the children involved, the publishing of the village or neighbourhood they are from, their school or the city or the state they are from could also indirectly reveal their identities as their neighbours or schoolmates would know it was them,” she said.
She said the only instances in which the identity of a child can be revealed in the media are missing or kidnapping cases, as the publicity is to safely locate the missing child.
