ABSTRACT
From their trade journals and everyday discourse, it is evident that social workers’ fear of hostile news media coverage is powerful and pervasive. As we have seen from earlier chapters, the anxiety generated by the most highly publicized trials following the death of a child has produced an inclusive mythology. Crucial-and potentially reassuring-questions about which media, in what circumstances, about what clients, of which agencies, are not thought through. It is already clear (and will become more so when the probation service and voluntary agencies are considered in later chapters) that, where there has been aggressive news treatment, it has focused on local authority social services. Does this mean that all national daily papers have an automatic predisposition to be at least critical (in the case of the centre left press and the broadsheets) or condemnatory (in the case of the Tory tabloid press) of everything that social services does, simply because it is social services? If so, we should expect that, when mistakes are made or controversial policies pursued in respect of client groups other than children, then the national press would use similar templates of coverage.
