‘Heads Must Roll’? Emotional politics, the press and the death of Baby P

In the major reforms and reviews of social work in the UK that followed the death of Baby P in 2007, significant attention has been paid to the relationship between social work and the media. The College of Social Work, established in 2012, has created a media centre, commissioned and published research into media ethics, and produced a media guide for social workers. Whilst The Munro Review of Child Protection explicitly addressed the responsibilities of politicians in relation to media stories about social work, there has been little detailed analysis of their role. This paper presents findings from research undertaken by the author involving the analysis of ‘moral talk’ in political and press accounts of the death of Baby P. I argue that politicians, in conjunction with the press, actively mobilised public anger towards social work through their responses. The paper further suggests that politicians and the press have a shared mutual interest in the co-authorship of ‘bad’ stories about social work. This paper is timely given the continuing impact of the social work reform agenda and the potential implications of the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press in Britain.