What does the changing media environment mean for charities?

The revelations surrounding phone hacking at the News of the World
constitute perhaps the most damaging scandal to hit the media in a
generation. Public confidence in
the Fourth Estate, or at least some sections of it, has been badly hit,
prompting calls for a wholesale change in the UK’s media culture. But what does this changing media
landscape mean for charities?

It has not been lost on some commentators that this is the latest in a
string of scandals to hit the UK’s institutions. The City’s financial crisis in 2007 and the Parliamentary
expenses furore two years later brought public confidence in those two
institutions to record lows – and this third scandal shows all the signs of
having the same effect on the media.

The result is that the public’s trust in not one, not two, but three of
the many pillars on which our society rests has been betrayed, begging the
question – who is left? With the
public growing increasingly wary of lending any organisation their trust, it is
even more important that the charitable and voluntary sector puts winning and
keeping the public’s confidence at the centre of our work.

On a more practical level, how should charities react? In my view, the crisis in national
print journalism should serve only to reinforce the need to broaden the
channels we use to communicate our messages to the public and our stakeholders
alike.

This means increasing and improving our use of social media, but we
should also look to the ‘old’ as well as the ‘new’. Local and regional media outlets continue to enjoy the
public’s confidence and I believe these channels should be placed higher on
the agenda for charity communicators.

A recent survey conducted by the Newspaper Society confirmed the
widely-held view that local media outlets are the most trusted source of news,
with 45 percent of people placing their trust in local newspapers and radio
stations, compared to just 33 percent for the national press. These figures, of course, predate the
eruption of the phone hacking story at the beginning of July and so we can expect this gap to widen
further.

The communication of localised, postcode-level messages can be a
powerful tool, and one that the Consumer Credit Counselling Service (through
its ‘DebtView’ interactive statistics map) and other charities use to great
effect. The greater trust placed
in local media, and the greater sense of relevance and immediacy it can provide
to its audience, make it an ideal platform for third sector organisations to
use at the community level.

National newspapers have endured in the UK for nearly two centuries, and
no matter how bad the present scandal gets, they will of course remain a key
medium for charities to promote their causes. They are, however, very far from the only game in town – and
in the search for a broader range of channels, national charities would be well
advised to think ‘local’, as well as ‘social’.

Delroy Corinaldi, external affairs director, Consumer Credit
Counselling Service