Daily News shines on star child who cooks a storm.
Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) is delighted to award Daily News a GLAD[1]. This is for positively highlighting and accessing a star child in an article.
The article titled, “Teenager hopes to take the bakery industry by storm” (20/06/2023) written by Nokulunga Mkize is about Siphesihle Mhlongo (16) who runs her own cooking business named Cooking teen.
According to the article the magical skills started at home and her mother’s friend was her first client. She then posted her work on social media that resulted in her getting more orders. She and her mother decided to turn it into a business. She says, “Seeing that I can make my own money doing something that I really loved and enjoyed doing while I am still young motivated me to start my own business.” While running her baking business, the teen is said to be focusing on her schoolwork because she wants to pass grade 11.
At 16, the teen is already showing her entrepreneurial skills, this indicates that the teen is active and has a vision of becoming something big one day. It is stated in the article that her vision is to own a bakery and restaurant someday to create employment opportunities. Such coverage on the teen will encourage her to do more.
The journalist did a stellar job in having the teen’s voice heard in their own words instead of having adults speaking on their behalf.
The journalist must be commended for interviewing the child and giving them the opportunity to speak out. Such an effort by the journalist and Daily News could help to increase the number of media stories on children with children’s voices. A recent media monitoring report[2] by MMA on coverage of children revealed that children’s voices in the media was at 7% in 2021.
MMA would like to encourage Daily News to continue reporting on stories about children and afford the children opportunities to make their voices heard when in the children’s best interest.
Written by Msizi Mzolo
Edited by Ntombifuthi Kubeka
[1] GLADs are awarded to media for reporting on children responsibly and for accessing them.
[2] https://mediamonitoringafrica.org/wordpress22/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Childrens-Report-2021.pdf
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