As mentioned in my last blog entry 11,000,000 Takeover Day never really took off, but what about young people's organisations like CRAE and the BYC? Newsround doesn't report on their work and events. Why?

And why doesn't Newsround report news from the UK Youth Parliament? After all, in July 2005 Newsround presspacker, Rebecca said that the Youth Parliament helps raise awareness, and bring about positive changes in issues affecting young people. She urged others to get involved.

The answer appears to be the BBC's near abandonment of teenage youth. Although kids aged 11-18 can take part in the Youth Parliament, the BBC is no longer interested in teenagers and has decided that anything relevant to that age group must be kept out of CBBC kids' TV.

On 3 December 2007, some 8 months after Newsround's actual 35th birthday, the programme announced the results from their survey of kids aged 6-12. Here's an extract from the announcement on CBBC channel at 8.25am -

Sonali: It seems that overall most of you are actually feeling pretty good about things. How do we know that? Well today Newsround is releasing the results of a special survey we've done to mark our 35th birthday. It's called 'All About You' and one of the biggest things we found is most of you are happy with your lives and yourselves. We questioned a thousand kids from all over the country and more than 9 out of 10 of you said that you like the way you are, and used positive words like happy, funny and clever to describe yourselves. 7 out of 10 of you also felt that you're having a better time as a child than your parents did. Our survey's findings seem to go against the results of a recent study carried out by the United Nations' children organisation UNICEF. Out of 21 rich countries they ranked Britain the worst place to be a child.

Newsround's main evening programme at 5.25pm on BBC1 didn't mention the UNICEF report (pdf). Some further details of the Newsround survey are given in a BBC press release. The BBC was involved in surveys of young people a year ago. (see blogs on 6 & 9 December 2006)