How Do News Media View the Community Sector?

The Good News/Good Deeds project was conceived in the shadow of the United Way of America scandal of 1994. The reporting done about the organization president's financial dealings was confirmation for journalists that aggressive, adversarial reporting of not-for-profit issues works. It is important, without doubt, for citizens to have information that will allow them to hold charities and their directors responsible for careful resource management. The area open to question is whether this type of reporting — when there is no other — gives citizens what they need to fully participate in community life and to contribute their volunteer time and philanthropic dollars effectively.

Just one quote, among many from Good News/Good Deeds focus groups, confirms the importance of the United Way of America incident in journalists' eyes. When local journalists from outlying areas were asked to consider not-for-profits as a source of news and then share some ideas about how news judgments would be made about them, one radio news director responded: "I am pretty keen on who's involved, what their motivations are, what the mission is. A not-for-profit organization can take on... the same attributes of a bureaucracy that... has lost touch with who it serves; ...The head of United Way — look at what he did to the image of that organization."

In another focus group, Good News/Good Deeds asked about journalists' views of the community sector. A radio journalist responded: "I heard a Washington Post reporter who did all the United Way stories when the United Way executive was flying around and limo [sic] driving... that was really [an] awakening [about non-profits] and when I realize the huge size of this sector, and it is invisible..."