Ask Charity Weblog

Charities involved in suicide have long been campaigning to ensure the media reports suicides responsibly. The danger is that if the suicides are reported too accurately ie with too much detail about how the deed was done, potential suicides are encouraged to try the same method. Recently campaigners were appalled to see press photos of a woman who was jumping from a building - her nearest and dearest were dismayed by the coverage as well. The Press Complaints Commission has now published guidelines on how suicides should be covered. Not sure what this proves, other than that if you produce good evidence that the style of media coverage is causing harm you can get those responsible to rein in their normal instinct to report as much as they know. Here's an article on the subject http://media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,,1807974,00.html

Posted by Charity at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In general charities feel they have little clout with the media or with the media regulator, Ofcom. But the National Heart Forum, a coalition of health and other charities, are making big waves in their attempt to get Ofcom to change their consultation on the regulation of food advertising on television. The NHF is now saying that Ofcom is trying to scare them off legal action. This reflects a longstanding concern amongst charities that Ofcom listens more to the media industry than to the voluntary sector - and that Ofcom lack systems to represent the interests of citizens. It'll be interesting to see whether the NHF can get anywhere. All the big media organisations and the food industry are against restriction....

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I found this out when I went to a seminar organised by the International Broadcasting Trust and the Development Education Association. DFID believes that many people learn about the developing world through watching TV programmes but know that its difficult to "sell" such programmes to commissioners. So to kick-start the process they pay for Indies' development time and hope that if more developing world programmes are pitched, more will be made. DFID doesn't in any way dictate the content of the programmes pitched because funds are challenged through the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association. Strikes me as quite imaginative. Incidentally a new report on how much TV does cover the developing world has just been published http://www.ibt.org.uk/3WE/Research/BringingWorldTop.htm which shows that the BBC covers the developing world much more than other broadcasters.

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I presented askCHARITY and VAMU research to the Media CSR forum. Its a group of CSR representives from big media organisations like the BBC, Aegis and Trinity Mirror. It formed partly I think because the media didn't have a good reputation for CSR and some representatives wanted to change that. But CSR and media will always be a difficult fit while the CSR representatives have little or no power over those who dictate editorial content. Some of the CSR representatives are company secretaries, others do it full time, but the Guardian is the only member whose CSR rep is also part of the Editorial management team. The forum members seemed interested in hearing of the problems charities have in getting media coverage, but none appeared to have definite plans to make life easier. Their big discussion point is media literacy - a new buzz term referring to people's understanding of how to access and critique all forms of media.

Posted by Charity at 01:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The askCHARITY team tried a new way of improving the dialogue between charities and the media the other day. We did a two hour "encounter session" introducing 30 representatives of crime charities to 40 producers and reporters from Radio 4. The event was highly organised with speed introductions followed by a session where charity representatives were asked to tell short real life stories about their work and their clients. It was quite a struggle to get the charity people to focus on human interest stories both before and during the event, but I was a Radio 4 producer for ten years and know that a good story is the best way to hook them in. Though maybe we should have allowed a little time for issues..... We had good feedback from all concerned but we'll only know if it really worked if some of the people and organisations find their way on to Radio 4 programmes. Hope to let you know in a few months time.

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