Social workers urged to report unethical media coverage

Social workers are being asked to give examples of unethical media coverage of their profession to the inquiries called in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.

The College of Social Work made the call to help inform submissions to Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into to ethics, practice and culture of the media and a separate investigation into the relationship between the media and the police.

Concerns about how media coverage of social work had demoralised the profession were raised by the Social Work Task Force and in Community Care’s Stand Up Now for Social Work campaign, itself a response to the hostile treatment meted out by some newspapers to social workers in the Baby P case.

The taskforce recommended the creation of the college in part to help provide a strong voice for the profession to raise its standing with the media and respond to negative reporting.

“Media coverage of social work often lacks objectivity and raises significant ethical issues which we want these inquiries to consider,” said Maurice Bates, interim co-chair at the College of Social Work.

“This new initiative by the College will give us the best opportunity yet to explore fully the sometimes murky waters of social work reporting.”

The college is to send a questionnaire to its 7,000 prospective members and will work with Buckinghamshire New University’s Centre for Health Communications Research and Excellence to inform its submissions to the inquiries.

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