Charity explains how it handled report on abuse

by Kate Magee, PR Week UK 29-May-08, 06:00

Save The Children has told how it spent more than a year working on a report that caused widespread ripples in the media this week.

National broadsheets and TV news all picked up on the report's finding that children in post-conflict areas are being abused by the very people drafted in to help look after them.

Save the Children initially selected two media partners - the BBC and The Daily Telegraph - to go to the Ivory Coast for a week to investigate the issue.

It also warned aid agencies and the UN in advance that it was publishing the report.

The charity's media manager Sarah Jacobs said the charity did not want communities to be overwhelmed by the media, making children more frightened about reporting incidents. 'We spent more than a year researching the report. When it was finally published, we needed to keep tight control of the media in the field,' she said.

Jacobs said the report was not a finger-pointing exercise but was intended to get the issue out in the open and encourage other aid agencies to be transparent.