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SOCIAL
WHIRL SETS REPORTING TRENDS
UK
Press Gazette (London) May 30 1988
Social
affairs is currently the boom area of serious
journalism, says Brian Deer [picture], who is in
charge of the beat for The Sunday Times. It is also a
very challenging specialism requiring a soft heart, a
hard nose, a quick brain and a good capacity for
striking a balance.
If
you feel that social affairs are things that begin at
dinner parties and invariably end in tears, the time
has arrived when you'll have to think again. Social
affairs is now the fastest-growing beat in journalism
and is set to become a powerful force in news and
current affairs.
Sunday
Times editor Andrew Neil was first off the mark,
giving a reporter (as it happens, myself) the title
of social affairs correspondent two and a half years
ago. The Western Mail followed soon after, and
more recently the Press Association and the Financial
Times have both created the job.
But
the biggest boost lately has come from the BBC, where
John Birt, the deputy director general, announced
last month that he was creating a whole social
affairs group for television and radio as part of his
overhaul of broadcast journalism.
The
arrival of these new jobs should not be a surprise.
We are now in the period of what The Times
last October called "the social affairs
parliament" In health, social security, housing,
crime prevention, local government and education, the
government has embarked on a revolution that must be
reported well.
No
end of social issues are coming to the fore. The
position of pensioners in an ageing population, the
role of custody with prisons overcrowded, the rise in
awareness of how we abuse the young, the multiple
deprivations in the inner cities, the
life-opportunities open to the poor and unemployed.
In
the past, some aspects of the work have been carried
out by social services correspondents. But, like
labour editors, who are dying out as trade unions
lose their political clout, the social services
staffs are in terminal decline as the landscape is
transformed by social change.
For
the national dailies, the most practical result is
the growth of concern about health care. Covering the
NHS is now a big enough job alone for any
correspondent, and there has never been any logical
reason why social security, another booming field of
reporting, should be bolted onto it.
In
other countries, social affairs has long been an
established concept. Many governments have a cabinet
minister for the area, often combined with
responsibility for employment, and Mrs Thatcher is at
present considering breaking up health and social
security and creating such a department here.
But
for Sunday papers and broadcasters in particular,
social affairs journalism has been born out of a
recognition that for one member of the staff, or a
team, to consider the various social issues together
produces an understanding of the whole that is
greater than the sum of the parts.
My
paper's "Old and Cold" campaign for the
elderly in winter, for example, needed to move
quickly with a detailed understanding of social
security, housing and social services provisions, as
well as the networks needed to produce real instances
of people in difficulty who were willing to be
photographed.
Take,
again, the position of children in care. Their
welfare will be considered by a local authority case
conference which may include a doctor, a social
worker, a teacher, a health visitor, a probation
officer, the police, and sometimes other specialists.
A
good social affairs journalist would know the
professional networks, problems and language of any
of these people - gaining the chance to avoid
ignorant or naive reporting, and perhaps counter the
frequently misleading steers on policy from
government "sources".
Even
more important, however, is the need for this new
specialism to go direct to primary sources. Good
reporting means talking to junkies about heroin, to
children about the Cleveland scandal, and to
claimants about benefit changes - efforts that are
not made by political staffs and which are sometimes
used unprofitably by general reporters.
Since
the reality in the social front-line often clashes
with the voice of government, the social affairs
specialist has a tough political task to balance out
conflicting views of the world. Too tough-minded and
nobody will speak to you. Too heartfelt in your
treatment and nothing much is useable.
Social
affairs is also very much about an attitude of mind.
At The Sunday Times, we like to think that there is
as much dignity in the words of a bag lady as in
those of a full-blown secretary of state - and both
are often surprised, and sometimes pleased, to be
treated as equals when it comes to an interview.
Spending
a lot of time with the 25% or so of the population
who are missing out on the material gains of the
Thatcher years is bound to rub off on even the most
hard-bitten reporter. And like the old social
services people, the social affairs correspondent is
bound to be seen as a liberal.
Doubtless
this will add to our reputation in some quarters as
the moaning minnies' staff, but as the government
ploughs on with welfare, health, housing, education
and local government finance reform, social affairs
journalism is very much a specialism whose time has
arrived.
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Brian Deer. All rights reserved. No portion of this
article on social affairs journalism in the UK may be
copied, retransmitted, reposted, duplicated or
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of the author. Responses, information and other
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