Special Tries to Help Kids Cope

Since the launch of “Nick News,” Nickelodeon’s award-winning newsmagazine for kids during the Gulf War a decade ago, host and executive producer Linda Ellerbee has had one credo: “Don’t lie to kids.”

And she hasn’t. She has never talked down to her audience. The veteran TV journalist has simply and succinctly explained such horrific events as the Columbine school shootings and the Oklahoma City bombing, and she’s managed to calm children’s shattered nerves and soothe their fears. On Sunday, less than a week after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon, Ellerbee is the host of a commercial-free special edition of the series: “Nick News: Kids, Terrorism and the American Spirit.”

Just as with all of the editions of “Nick News,” Ellerbee will have several children joining her to ask questions and offer their opinions. She will also have a psychologist involved in the discussion. To prepare for the special, Ellerbee and her staff have been talking to kids on the phone as well as on the streets for the past two days. “We’ve been talking to experts in trauma and child psychology, so we have had a lot of good guidance,” Ellerbee said from her car phone Thursday on her way into New York for the first time since the attack.

The overall message of the 30-minute special is to let kids know that despite the heinous nature of the attack, “there are still more good people than bad. We will focus heavily on how well Americans have behaved during this.”

If kids want to do something to help during the national tragedy, the best way they can help, Ellerbee said, is to be tolerant of Islamic children. “What we will be saying to kids is that the one thing every single one of you can do to truly help in this situation is to stand side by side with the Islamic children in your school and your neighborhood. You have a chance here to do better than your elders and make sure this does not turn into what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II.”

The New York-based cable network decided Tuesday that “Nick News” had to quickly combat children’s questions and fears. “Everybody in the country who is glued to the TV needs to contextualize this for our kids,” said Cyma Zarghami, executive vice president and general manager of Nickelodeon. “I see this more than any of the other specials, more of a service to the whole family,” adding that the special is geared to children 6 and older.

“We are urging kids to bring an adult with them to watch the show,” Ellerbee said. “One of the things that our show does is when kids and parents watch together, they find an opening to a conversation. The message is [for parents] to talk to kids and let them talk and listen to them and keep the talk going.”

‘There Are No Great Answers’

The terrorist attacks, Ellerbee has discovered, have left kids asking two questions: “Am I safe?” and “Why do these people hate us, whoever they are?”

Ellerbee admits “there are no great answers.”

The general consensus of the children they’ve interviewed, Ellerbee said, is that they are not as scared of the continual replaying of the airliners slamming into the towers because it looks like a special effect from a big-budget disaster movie. But they are overcome with fear when they see scenes of hundreds of people running in packs in the street or interviews with emotionally distraught children who have lost parents in the disaster.

“Nick News” will be showing a clip of the plane crash and the subsequent crumbling of the World Trade Center buildings as well as the aftermath of the plane crash into the Pentagon (“because it is not radio, it’s television”), but “we are not going to show people running in the street,” Ellerbee said. “We are not going to be showing blood. We will hit the events very quickly and go straight from those events to how people have behaved during the emergency and how well they are behaving now.”

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“Nick News: Kids, Terrorism and the American Spirit” can be seen Sunday at 8:30 p.m. on Nickelodeon. The network has rated it TV-Y (suitable for young children).