Three articles entitled “School is cool” (Daily Sun, 10/02/2011 p.2), “Free sanitary towels for poor pupils will improve school attendance” (The New Age, 07/02/2011 p.24) and “Rural girls get help for their periods blues” (The New Age, 09/03/2011 p.9) gave Media Monitoring Africa (MMA) a reason to be MAD.

The first article “School is cool” is about a campaign led by Yfm radio DJ Faith Mangope. She visited a school described as one of most “needy” and “poverty-stricken schools” in and around Gauteng and donated parcels with school items. The article reports that the aim of this campaign is to encourage young people to focus on education despite the challenges they face.  This is without doubt a good initiative as it is directed at helping children who are in need. However, the manner in which the story was reported was disempowering and portrayed the children – none of whom were accessed for their views – as needy and poor.

The second article “Free sanitary towels for poor pupils will improve school attendance” reports on the chairman of the National Youth Development Agency Andile Lungisa’s visit to a school in Mpumalanga where he handed out free sanitary towels. His visit was part of an initiative aimed at bringing dignity to girl pupils in both rural and township schools since most girls in these areas cannot afford sanitary towels and as a result, tend to miss school during their menstrual cycles. This is also a great initiative however the way in which the story was reported and the picture published along with it subjected the girls involved to stigmatization. Journalists should be aware that a lot of young girls, especially teenagers, consider their menstrual cycles to be a private issue. It is a subject matter that they do not easily share with other people. Therefore, publishing a picture portraying a handover of sanitary towels – by a male figure – to girl pupils at the school (one of whom had her identity revealed), violated their rights to privacy. The image portrayed the children as needy and as a result failed to afford them due agency and dignity.

The third article “Rural girls get help for their periods blues” is similar to the second article. It reported on a campaign called “Always keeping girls in school” aimed at providing girls from rural areas with free sanitary towels. The article, on its own, raised important issues about gender inequality and how it can be curbed at schools by giving young girls a chance to never miss school because they cannot afford sanitary towels. However, the views of the children in the article were not accessed, moreover the headline was in bad taste and trivialised the subject matter of the article.

All three articles alluded to every child’s right to education and dignity, however they failed to respect the dignity and privacy of the children they reported on as enshrined in Section 10 of the Bill of Rights. Section 28(2) of the Bill of Rights also states that “a child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child”.

In the above cases, the interests of all the children involved were clearly ignored and this gave MMA every reason to be MAD.