Social Work and the News Media: A Hopeless Case?

Correspondence to Meryl Aldridge, Department of Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD. Summary The belief that the profession gets unusually poor news mediatreatment is entrenched among social workers. As a result, thesocial work press regularly prints articles discussing the issueand suggesting solutions. This paper outlines the main sociologicalapproaches to theorizing about the media and locates the majorityof the profession's own accounts of its coverage within an idealist/pluralistmodel. Examples of positive presentation of social work arethen considered, but it is argued that many of these come fromlocal media. Approving items in the national press have beenlinked mainly with disasters and with the work of voluntaryagencies. Given the search for profit in a consumption-led society,it is unlikely that national news media, particularly the press,will fully endorse social work as it delivers state welfare.Attempts by social work agencies and professional institutionsto re-educate the media can have only limited success and shouldbe more carefully targeted.