摘要：TENyears ago, that is in 1999, the Norwegian Government and UNICEFlaunched the Oslo Challenge. It was a call to action with the aim to en-sure that the overwhelming power of the media for good in the lives of childrenis identified, encouraged and supported, while the potential harmful effectsare recognised and reduced. The call went out to everyone engaged in ex-ploring, developing, monitoring and participating in the complex relationshipbetween children and the media (The Mediawise Trust, 2003). This includesgovernments, organizations and individuals working for children, media pro-fessionals at all levels and in all media, the private sector, including mediaowners, children and young people, parents, teachers and researchers.The Challenge to media professionals at all levels and in all media is:to raise awareness in the media professions about the rights of childrenand how they can be protected and promoted by good professional prac-tices or harmed through inappropriate policies or actions;to work ethically and professionally according to sound media practicesand to develop and promote media codes of ethics in order to avoidsensationalism, stereotyping (including by gender) or undervaluing ofchildren and their rights;to resist commercial pressures that lead to children's issues and therights of children to freedom of expression, fair coverage and protectionfrom exploitation, including as consumers, being given low priority;to work to enhance the relationship between children and the media sothat both grow and improve in understanding of the positive and nega-tive power and potential of the relationshipThe challenge thus places responsibility on media professionals in ensur-ing that the rights of children are protected and promoted. One way of doingthis among others is to bring issues affecting children to the fore, thus settingagenda for them. This also implies that the voices of children are heard onissues affecting them. It is against this background that this study examinedhow Nigerian newspapers have covered children issues as to bring such issuesto the fore, thus setting agenda for them as required by the Oslo challenge
