12 September 2022, Daily Maverick, William Bird
There are three key issues about the girl model story. Firstly, and quite unusually, the story accessed the voice and views of the young girl. This is why the story appeared on our radar at Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) as we consistently analyse how the media report on children.
In most stories there were three quotes from the young girl, which was really different, that it was a girl was even more unusual, even for a white girl to be given a voice is rare. MMA’s research shows that children’s voices are heard in only 7% of stories which feature children. So hearing the voice of the young girl seemed really positive.