By selecting the ordinary events that society needs to know about and the ones that it can ignore, and through coding these events in news format, journalism makes a type of experience of the surrounding world available to the public. Increasingly, communication tools are the means with which civilized man experiences events. Knowledge of the nature of this experience is one way in which society can relate to its own functioning and condition. In this study, we examined 15 reports published in the "Estado de Minas" newspaper in 2004, focusing on a special report on "Stolen Childhood". Through a strategy of esthetic deconstruction and studying the news narrative relating to stolen childhood, along with content analysis on the material, it became evident that the news value of the transgression was what determined the journalistic newsworthiness of the sexual crimes committed against children and adolescents.
Sexual violence; Child sexual maltreatment; Communication media; Child; Adolescent