Members of Bal Panchayat, a forum for children's self-expression, today said issues of children affected by tsunami were not being given adequate importance by the media.

Presenting their reports here after a media scanning exercise, where they analysed the coverage of children's issues by major English and Hindi newspapers over a period of two-weeks in the aftermath of tsunami, they said issues of malnutrition and counseling of children were not being highlighted enough.

"In the newspaper I scanned, out of the 58 items on tsunami only 13 related to children. I could hardly find news items relating to nutrition, trauma care as well as safety and rehabilitaion of children," said 11-year-old Aarti Rawat.

Taking offence to pictures portraying the grim reality of tsunami-affected areas, most of them emphasised the need for projecting hope amidst disaster.

"Some of the photographs were extremely disturbing and gives you a very dark view of the scene. It is a request to the media to be more sensitive in the presentation of photographs since it gives birth to fear among readers," said 14-year-old Chandan Kumar.

According to Ajay, a class vii student, most of the stories relating to children were relegated to the back pages and hence were not getting any attention.

The children also emphasised the need to do systematic follow-up of issues.