News about the child welfare system: How journalists can tell a more complete story
When the child welfare system is strong, everyone benefits — but when it struggles, the country’s most vulnerable children and families are harmed. An important step toward improving this complex system is understanding the public discourse about it — that is, what policymakers, voters, and others know about the system, how it works, and what can and should be done to improve it. We know that high-profile cases of child abuse or neglect will often dominate headlines, but less clear is how the news covers the child welfare system. To find out, Berkeley Media Studies Group (BMSG), a program of the Public Health Institute, is partnering with Resolve Philly to identify patterns in news coverage as part of a larger project designed to support journalists in telling more complete stories about the child welfare system.