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Media partnership - News of the World and Beatbullying

By Joe Lepper, Third Sector, 6 July 2010

Campaign led to a 25,000-name petition, and 10,000 replied to an online questionnaire

For a partnership between a media brand and a charity that has done the most to raise a charity's profile

FINALIST

- Turner Broadcasting and the Big Issue Foundation

Beatbullying linked up with Sunday newspaper News of the World three years ago after it approached Andy Coulson, the editor at the time, to help push the issue of bullying up the political and media agenda.

The first phase of their joint campaign, which began in 2007, focused on highlighting school and community bullying. It won the support of the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, for new school powers to tackle bullies, and prompted the paper and the charity to launch a second phase last year.

This new phase, Click Bullying Into Touch, aimed to strengthen anti-bullying policies and tackle cyber-bullying. A key aim was to ensure social media firms took greater responsibility for their users' online safety and made information about the dangers of bullying available to parents and young people. Another aim was to raise News of the World readers' awareness of online safety.

The campaign, which focused strongly on case studies, attracted 25,000 signatures to a petition calling for social media sites, schools and politicians to do more to combat bullies. An online questionnaire drew just under 10,000 responses from parents, which provided a valuable source of information on bullying.

The social networking sites Bebo and Facebook, the video website YouTube and the search engine Google signed up to the campaign and pledged to create 'help' buttons for users on their social networking sites. The first three revamped their help centres to focus on online safety and anti-bullying measures. YouTube also brought in a 'three strikes and you're out' policy against bullies and Facebook gave free advertising to four cyber-safety charities, including Beatbullying. Meanwhile, Google has put money into the charity's Cyber Mentors scheme, which provides an online safety service for young people.

Click Bullying Into Touch also called for every school to give a senior teacher specific responsibility for combating bullying. The proposal was backed by representatives of all the main parties: Ed Balls, the then children and families secretary; Michael Gove, now the education secretary; and Nick Clegg, now the Deputy Prime Minister. The three main political parties also included commitments in their manifestos to fund anti-bullying measures.

Beatbullying estimates that the equivalent advertising value of the paper's coverage was £761,191.

Anne Longfield, chief executive of 4Children, who helped to judge this award, said: "What was so eye-catching about this campaign was the scale of what it achieved for the charity and the way it brought the issue of bullying to a huge audience."

Beatbullying and the News of the World are committed to continuing the campaign; a further phase will be launched in November.

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Joseph McGowan

Joseph McGowan, 12 July 2010, 17:07

It's a good campaign but ironic that it should be awarded to the News of the World which only last year paid out a record amount in a bullying case. As the Guardian reported: "A News of the World reporter who suffered from a culture of bullying led by former editor Andy Coulson, who is now David Cameron's head of communications, has been awarded almost £800,000 for unfair dismissal and disability discrimination," and, as you will see from the article above, it was the same Andy Coulson who is being lauded here. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/23/andy-coulson-now-bullying-payout

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