ABSTRACT
The media's high degree of attention to social work in recent years, and journalist's consequently extended exposure to the subject, particularly during the Cleveland affair, has had benefits for the standard of coverage. Nevertheless, news, current affairs and documentaries have shared in the concentration on child care tragedies and such apparent failings as in Cleveland, doubtlessly on the ground that these are held to have been the most important stories. Emerging rules of thumb and more background knowledge are detectable in, say, television news. Television is constituted by images or pictures, but it also helps create images in the sense beloved of PR, advertising and political pundits in their talk of the images of people, products or parties. Programmes are frequently proposed within television in terms of what may be called a thesis, a new angle or disclosure, exclusive interviews or access.
