"How do you explain human evil to children?": 25 years of the news program that should be prescribed in classrooms

Aiman, ten years old, trusts InfoK. He never misses a broadcast day. He does not trust social networks or other portals, he says there is a lot of fake news and that only when the children's news program reports the news, he is satisfied. He is in the best hands. After 25 years of the program, its presenter since 2020, Núria Vilanova, confesses that the trust of the young viewers is the best gift they can send her. “You have given me goosebumps, Aiman. These words give meaning to our work,” gestures the presenter as she gives him a hug. Aiman and two hundred boys and girls had the opportunity to meet the host and her youngest reporter, Alaaddine Azzouzi, at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where the educational center and the public television celebrated a congress about the more than 4,300 programs of InfoK.

“Naturally, children always ask why. To me, it is obvious that you must be able to answer them in an appropriate way, with the right words and the right images,” asserts Vilanova. The goal of InfoK in 2001 was to open the door of the world to children to form “critical citizens with arguments who can change things.” Currently, the mission has not changed a comma. “They have the capacity to understand the world. A politician said that children are citizens of the future. No, children are citizens of the present. They must have a voice now, from the moment they start to speak,” claims Laia Servera, journalist and presenter of the program between 2016 and 2020.

The first presenter of InfoK until 2003, Núria Solé, believes that it was a duty they deserved to have, a program of “tailor-made information.” “They are citizens who live, who are part of society,” shares Solé. InfoK is a way—she acknowledges—for them to have “increasingly critical awareness, so they know how to distinguish between an opinion and a fact, and know how to navigate the immense jungle that is this current world.”

Manel Alias, presenter between 2003 and 2006, points to the authenticity of a news program that does not hide and that explains society as it is, which causes reflection and builds a 'why' around a fact. Alias confesses that translating the complexity of the world to an audience not used to it “is demanding work.” “It is in general for adults, and I believe that for children even more so,” the journalist fires back. InfoK has been for him a “very good school of journalism.” It taught the four journalists to look at the world again through the eyes of a child. “We have tried to sustain and maintain throughout our time in other adult news programs the will that news not be taken for granted,” confesses Solé, who has been hosting TN Comarques for more than ten years. “We carry it deep within our DNA.”

The Global Media and Information Literacy Week, promoted by UNESCO and the United Nations, closes this Saturday, October 31st, with the commitment and responsibility towards young people and the networks. The focus now turns to children's news programs, a format explored by only a dozen televisions in the world, as a tool to combat disinformation, foster critical thinking, and protect democratic quality.

One of the first children's programs, the Newsround from the BBC, with nearly 55 years behind it, still considers whether it is doing it right. Its editor, Lewis James, asserts that there is "a debate around disinformation, social media and trust, both in the United Kingdom and in Catalonia with InfoK". "Both for adults and for children, it is difficult to know which source of information to trust," laments the English journalist, who reiterates the importance of children's news programs. "At the end of the day, young people will find the news through other channels." UAB professor and promoter of the congress Marta Narberhaus considers InfoK an essential rara avis, in the face of a landscape "where this type of content is scarce and often fragile." Informing childhood is "making visible realities that often remain outside the conventional media agenda," defends the professor.

Human evil, an impossible thing to explain

Servera describes InfoK as a space of honesty. “We were the first to be aware that we didn’t know everything.” “Language is very powerful, and if it is accompanied by a careful image, I believe that everything can be understood. Do you know the only thing we found very difficult to explain? Human evil, because it is so gratuitous,” she confesses. The civil war in Syria—which caused 7.2 million internally displaced people and 4.8 million refugees outside the country—was a turning point when the use of chemical weapons in the bombings was discovered. InfoK considered how to explain the cruelty of events prohibited by the Geneva Convention. “Even in war, which is a space of maximum chaos and controversy, there must be rules; even there, there must be ethics,” they explained.

“If you only explain that many children have died because some weapons that are bullshit have been used, you generate a feeling of sadness and helplessness. Wow, by explaining the Geneva Convention perhaps you generate, in addition, indignation. Indignation is more active. Indignation propels you,” the journalist claims. After that news report, many letters from many children arrived at the newsroom saying, "When I grow up, I want to work for the UN, because I don’t want this to ever happen again."

“Sometimes children are more afraid if they only receive a piece of information; they are more likely to become anxious,” James proclaims. Children have the right even to “know, process and understand” the most unpleasant events. “It is about children having this window into the world to be able to understand it,” reiterates the BBC editor, who cites the terrorist attack at the Manchester Arena at the Ariana Grande concert or the Twin Towers. “It happened at noon, around two o'clock, and at seven we had the news program. We had to explain it. You could say, "No, let’s not explain it because it’s very hard, there were people jumping from the Twin Towers!" But they will know anyway and will ask themselves: "When I get on a plane, can it crash into some towers?" It was necessary to make it clear that it is news precisely because it is extraordinary,” reflects Alias. “When the war in Ukraine happened, the children asked: why are there wars? They cannot understand that humans fight each other. So I also asked myself why there are wars,” confesses Vilanova.

A lesson for children

The influencers on TikTok, misinformation and fake news are the antithesis of InfoK. Jofre, just like Aiman, trusts InfoK. In fact, he also trusts this newspaper. "Our teacher [the teacher Olga Zurita, from the Bellaterra School] brought us a news article from the ARA newspaper about the fact that the Sagrada Família had cracked,” he begins as he shares the anecdote. Everything, however, turned out to be a lie. “She left us clues to see that it was a manipulated news story: the pages were not numbered and the font was not the same!”, exclaims Jofre proudly. The symbolic exercise, now hanging on the classroom bulletin board, was intended to demonstrate that we must be very careful with what we see on social media. Now more than ever, warns Vilanova, due to artificial intelligence. “They have brought the debate home, all of them, to talk about it with their families. They had it very well thought out,” expresses Zurita. “In the end, we understood that it is very easy for anyone to know how to do it,” adds Irati, from the same class.

Vilanova advocates for media education for children, so that they learn the concepts that have altered the information landscape. "The most important thing is the work with schools, that they learn to see reality and ask questions," the journalist concludes, surrounded by an avalanche of young citizens asking her for an autograph.