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Past presenters of Newsround in 2002: Lizo Mzimba, John Craven and Becky Jago

Newsround, the world's longest running children's news programme is celebrating its 50th birthday.

The show, initially commissioned as a six-week experiment by the BBC's Children's Department, was first broadcast on 4th April 1972, and has been running ever since.

"It is such an honour for me to have started it," says John Craven, the show's first presenter. "I'm terribly proud that it's still an important part of national life."

Craven helped to develop the Newsround format that still persists today.

Newsround - Celebrating 50 Years

"We had to be dealing with serious news, news we thought the children should know about. [But also] news that we thought they wanted to know about.

"We honed in on sport, and hobbies, and school stories. Space, adventure wildlife. All these kind of areas that children were interested in we had on Newsround".

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Leah Boleto says Newsround is "not patronising"

"I think it's putting kids at the hearts of stories," says Leah Boleto, who presented the programme between 2010 and 2019.