Engaging with the media

Towards the end of 2018, we had a lot of media interest in our work at Little Village. It started with a Dispatches programme with associated articles in The Sun and The Mirror. BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour and a double-page spread in the Observer followed, building on several earlier appearances on BBC News, Channel 4 News and LBC Radio.

Jude Habib asked me to write a blog for her in advance of the excellent Social Media Exchange event she’s running next month. You can check it out here, or read on to see what I said about the lessons we learnt about engaging with the media.

1. Get upstream. You and your service users are the experts. That means not only can you help journalists to understand an issue they are interested in, you can also help them to identify the issues that matter in the first place. It was brilliant working with SoundDelivery early last year as they facilitated precisely those conversations. For example, Jude invited Jezza Neumann to one of our storytelling workshops. Afterwards, I talked to him about my strong hunch that baby banks were growing fast, that people weren’t aware of this fact, and how they were a powerful way of understanding the impact of austerity on families in the UK. Before I knew it, he’d pitched the idea of a film to the Dispatches team, and within two months, it had been broadcast.
2. Make sure you know the angle. As a small charity it can be really exciting to get any media interest at all. One consequence of this is that it can feel a bit arrogant or pushy to ask for more information on the angle, and the story they’re trying to tell, before agreeing to participate. But it’s vital — you don’t want to end up involved in a story that doesn’t 100% align with your mission. Journalists are totally used to this. Find an experienced media volunteer who can do all the pre-conversations about why they’re interested in you, what they’ll be asking, and the nature of the story, and ask them to be the first point of contact with the media. If you can’t find this person in your own networks, take a look at the Media Trust who offer a matching service between small charities and media professionals.
3. Consent, consent and more consent. At Little Village we work with families who can be extremely vulnerable. Even for those who aren’t, it’s crucial to ensure you have a clear and consistent approach to consent. Here’s our form. It’s worth noting that we operate a policy of ‘continuous consent’: in other words, we check in with people throughout a media engagement whether they’re still ok with the consent they gave. We’re very strict with photographers about not taking wide shots of our playgroups and we always keep a clearly designated area shot-free. We have to be assertive about this. It is always worth it. The safety of the families visiting us is paramount.
4. It takes time. My mind was blown the first time a news team came to visit. There were three of them, two of us and we spent three hours together. The final piece lasted 30 seconds and was broadcast once on the regional News at Ten. Don’t expect this work to be quick! It will eat your time. That’s especially true if you’re helping journalists to meet people who are experiencing the issues you’re working on. You will need to coach that person, and accompany them to interviews, which can often be an emotional experience. Unfortunately social media can be unkind and it’s vital to look out for people after the event as well as before and during it. Make sure you have a lot of time to do this.
5. It’s ok to say no. In the run up to Christmas we had more media requests than we could manage: I guess journalists could see the power of a story highlighting the difficult circumstances of the families we support at a festive time of year. But it came on the back of a term when we’d had a lot of cameras around, and we started to feel a bit like we were in a fish tank being watched. I took a difficult decision to turn down a fantastic national news feature because I felt that our volunteers and families needed to be left alone to get on with our work. With hindsight, it was absolutely the right thing to do for Little Village (and fingers crossed the news team will come back this year…)
6. It can feel a bit grubby but (mostly) that’s ok. You’re used to working in depth, you understand the detail, the importance of language choices and the complexities of whatever public services and social structures you’re navigating. Life is less complicated in the media. Issues need to be presented simply and in a way that attracts attention. Sometimes that feels very uncomfortable. You will need to make the judgement call about whether the loss of nuance is worth the media exposure. In my experience, so long as you’ve stuck to 1–5, it usually is.

We do this work because we want Little Village to be a platform for the families we support to share their stories and raise awareness of child poverty in the UK today. We want to show how poverty is blighting lives right here, right now, on our doorsteps. The first step towards addressing child poverty, which is rising for the first time in a generation, is to raise awareness. We can’t do that without amplifying our messages through the media.

Here we are in The Observer just before Christmas. I love how the title captures the crucial element of our work above and beyond the items we give out: hope.