Bahrain daily breaks ethics in reporting child abuse story !

Manama : Bahrain residents have expressed surprise and shock over a news report published against journalist ethics in a local English daily in Bahrain  (not DT News) by using the photos and names of a family involved in a controversy recently. As part of sensationalizing the news report, that the local daily had  missed to report previously, it published the 13-year-old Indian girl’s photo and name along with the parents’ pictures and names in today’s edition. 

Referring to the so-called 'sexual abuse’ by the father, the daily claims that the girl 'admitted it was all a lie'. However the strange thing is that the girl never said that she was sexually abused by her father.The abuse that the girl mentioned to DT News was being left for without food and care by their father for more than two months. She suffered the ordeal along with her young brother. A neighbour told our reporter that the kids were found picking food from the garbage, obviously due to extreme hunger.

The local daily has violated journalistic ethics by disclosing the identities of the children, simply to coverup for the embarrassment of missing to report the story previously while DT News was the first to break it.  

“Respect the rights of children when they are interviewed or photographed without the consent of their parents or guardians. It is prohibited to publish anything that may be insulting to them or their families, especially cases which involve abuse,” a reader pointed out. 

DT News’ used only a representative picture  and did not disclose the identities of the victim when it published the report titled ‘Expat children abandoned sans food in flat by parents’ on April 10, page 3. Meanwhile DT News had enough opportunities to click pictures of the children. However we decided not to on humanitarian grounds.

The report was prepared based on DT News’ conversation with the social workers, Indian School Bahrain chairman (because the girl was a student of this school), Indian Embassy officials and the neighbour who took care of the children in their parents’ absence.  Neither the father nor the mother were available for a comment at that time, but the mother’s voice clippings recorded by a social worker, proved that the father’s alcoholism had led to problem within the family  which resulted in the neglect of the two children.