How Charities Balance News-Media Demands With Social-Service Clients’ Need for Privacy

IN THE TRENCHES

By Sandy Asirvatham

For a documentary feature film called Domestic Violence, which was released this winter, the director Frederick Wiseman was granted wide-ranging access to the clients in a Tampa, Fla., women’s shelter called the Spring. For more than two months in 1998, Mr. Wiseman’s cameras were allowed to record counseling sessions, interviews with women seeking shelter, and other situations normally conducted in the strictest confidence.

Jennifer Dunbar, the Spring’s public-relations officer, says the experience was entirely positive. “Not everyone at the shelter at that time [chose to be] in the film, but we had quite a few very brave clients who gave their consent,” she says. “There were some in very serious situations, where their abusers were not in prison, and yet these women felt strongly about getting people to understand the severity of this kind of abuse.”

Charities seek media coverage so they can inform and educate donors, lawmakers, and the general public about their work. But sometimes journalists and others come calling instead, and in those cases nonprofit groups — especially those, like the Spring, that serve vulnerable clients, such as victims of domestic violence, the homeless, or the elderly — may find themselves in a conundrum. As advocates for their causes, those charities want and need attention from the news media, but as providers of services, they are primarily concerned with preserving their clients’ privacy, dignity, and safety. Managing those competing interests is a high-stakes challenge for nonprofit groups and the people they serve.

The filming of Domestic Violence created unusual circumstances that encouraged the participation of both the Spring and its clients. Because of the projected long lag time between the filming and the documentary’s public release, Ms. Dunbar says, clients felt comfortable consenting to the cameras’ presence.

Additionally, Mr. Wiseman’s approach to shooting was low-key and nonintrusive, Ms. Dunbar says. The filmmaker has long had a reputation as a maker of socially conscious work, starting with his 1967 documentary, Titicut Follies, which exposed the poor conditions inside a Massachusetts hospital for the criminally insane and was credited with prompting the state’s lawmakers to make changes in laws governing the mentally ill. That reputation made all the difference to the Spring. “We wouldn’t just let anyone in who called themselves a filmmaker,” Ms. Dunbar says.

But it’s not every day that a charity is asked to spend two months participating in a documentary made by a respected filmmaker. More typically, a shelter like the Spring might be asked to provide sound bites for a local TV news story about a high-profile domestic violence case, to be broadcast that evening. In cases like those, Ms. Dunbar says, both the Spring’s clients and its counselors are far more conservative in granting access. Indeed, she says, the counselors sometimes override a client’s consent and shield her from reporters, particularly if she has only recently escaped a violent situation: “There’s a definite stage these women go through where they want to tell everyone their story — and they may not feel the same way later on.”

Despite the shelter’s cautious approach, Ms. Dunbar says, the positive experience of working with Mr. Wiseman has inspired the Spring to more actively court publicity. In the past, she says, the shelter’s executive director would simply respond to requests from reporters, considering both the merit of the idea and the proposed safeguards, such as obscuring faces and disguising voices for TV coverage, or changing names and identifying details for print stories. Now, Ms. Dunbar actively cultivates relationships with local journalists and works hard to be sure she will be the one they call first as an expert source of information on the issue of domestic violence.

She has begun to take advantage of opportunities to publicize the Spring’s work by issuing news releases about noteworthy events. For example, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush recently recommended in his proposed budget that the state spend $7-million to renovate and expand domestic-violence shelters as well as centers that try to help victims of abuse. Ms. Dunbar says she is planning to invite reporters to education sessions about domestic violence in an attempt to persuade them to be more explicit in their stories about homicides that result from such abuse. “Right now, domestic-violence homicides are not labeled as such in the press. They’re treated like freak accidents, which keeps the public from understanding the breadth of the problem.”

The Council on Accreditation for Children and Family Services requires the Spring and other organizations that it has accredited to keep a written media policy on hand. Ms. Dunbar says the council’s recommendations focus in part on ensuring that clients don’t serve as advocates for the organization: “The council doesn’t want any appearance of someone offering testimonials or being forced or pressured to say, ‘If it weren’t for the Spring….’”

Even in arenas where life-or-death safety concerns aren’t paramount, social-service organizations look for ways to shield clients from the potential indignities of media coverage. Seniors First, an Orlando, Fla. nonprofit group that directs Meals on Wheels and other support programs for homebound elderly people, finances the majority of its budget with private donations, and must therefore keep its work in the public eye. But Sheri McInvale, the group’s public-relations director, notes that some programs are easier to publicize than others.

Through Seniors First’s new Chow on Wheels program, for example, dog and cat food is delivered to homebound seniors who have pets. “What we’ve found is that people are openly so appreciative and want to tell their story, because it’s for their animals and not for them,” Ms. McInvale says. “They may be embarrassed about receiving charity for themselves, but if it’s for their pet, they’re just thrilled to talk about it.”

Ms. McInvale seeks to establish key relationships with print and TV reporters so that Seniors First becomes a primary source of information about the needs of poor, elderly people. But in this arena as well as in the field of domestic violence, the client’s informed consent is of fundamental importance — and if a client says no, the charity supports him or her.

“When the census came out,” she says, “we were asked to find seniors who were living together but not married, but people did not want to disclose that information.” Also, many of the group’s clients are reluctant to cooperate with reporters who want to do stories about grandparents raising their grandchildren, Ms. McInvale says, because they worry it might imply that their own children are in jail or unfit to be parents.

Reputable journalists should honor a request to protect the identity of a person whose public exposure could put his or her safety at risk, says Fred Brown, a retired Denver Post editor who is co-chairman of the ethics committee for the Society of Professional Journalists. Anecdotes about individuals can be conveyed without revealing telling details, he says, noting that photographs can also be taken from certain angles, or blurred in strategic places, to conceal a subject’s identity.

“Journalists who get irritated about complying with such guidelines need compassion transplants,” he says — and such irritation might be a warning sign that a particular reporter is unprofessional and untrustworthy. Mr. Brown suggests that nonprofit managers be reasonably cautious in dealing with such journalists.

“Reporters establish reputations built on their handling of situations like these,” he says. “Some are very proud and protective of their refusal to make deals. Other put top priority on trying to establish mutual respect and understanding with the people they’re reporting on, and the people they’re reporting for — the public. Don’t assume anything. Don’t assume that you’re dealing with someone who will be cooperative, but at the same time don’t assume you’re dealing with an obstinate jerk. Just talk it through.”

When a subject’s safety is not the main concern, his or her privacy becomes the key issue — and an issue that’s not always well defined, says Lee Wilkins, a professor of broadcast journalism at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. “In general, journalists are most likely to consider privacy and dignity concerns when the issue involves children, those who have some sort of infirmity — including the aged — and those who have not thrust themselves into the public spotlight. Journalists are pretty good at protecting children — less so the other categories,” says Ms. Wilkins.

News organizations, she notes, routinely withhold some information they possess, such as the names of rape victims, to protect vulnerable subjects. But, Ms. Wilkins says, social-service charities should be judicious and reasonable in their demands on journalists. Some organizations use “privacy” as a blanket excuse to keep news-media attention at bay, she says, and in doing so “fail to balance the rights of people to be left alone with the needs of society to understand the systems attempting to help them. As a journalist, I don’t need to know the name of the local welfare dad on my block. But as a journalist, I need to know — and so do other taxpayers — when that welfare dad and others like him are going to run out of benefits. As a reporter, I’ve had social-service agencies deny me access to aggregate information about classes of individuals, under what I believe to be mistaken assumptions about both individual privacy and the role of journalism in a democratic society.”

Most charities, though, fully understand the power of the press to aid their causes. For those nonprofit managers, carefully controlling the flow of information that results from news-media inquiries is key.

An umbrella or membership organization can help a charity sort out the best ways to meet the press. The Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance, an advocacy organization that represents 80 groups that aid the homeless, tries to serve as the public voice and information gatekeeper for its member organizations. It also helps small local charities balance another concern: their relationships with their donors. “Small organizations often don’t want to be perceived as rocking the boat or as being shrill and political,” says Philip Mangano, the alliance’s executive director.

In building relationships with journalists, establishing credibility is crucial, Mr. Mangano says. Be selective in the information funneled to reporters, he advises — don’t overwhelm them. “You want the media to understand that you know the difference between something that’s newsworthy and something that’s not,” he says. When asked to supply research statistics to underscore a point, use only the most conservative, credible ones available — government-generated, if possible, Mr. Mangano says. “The real numbers are dramatic enough.”

How does your organization handle news-media inquiries — and what have been your best and worst experiences with journalists? Tell us about it at brainstorms@philanthropy.com or on the Share Your Brainstorms online forum.