Handling the Media: A Free Toolkit from CIVICUS

This toolkit aims to provide useful insights and tips on how best to use the media. It is meant to be especially useful for organisations working through issues relating to the mass media, and for those who provide interviews to the media. The toolkit also offers an overview and examples on how to write a press release. In addition, the toolkit describes how newsrooms work in the mass media. It looks at issues of power and control, and moves on to offer practical guidelines when doing interviews with newspapers, radio, or television journalists. It also looks at issuing press statements.

Topics include:

• What is the media?
• Ownership and control of the media
• Why relate to the media?
• How the media works
• An interview? Yes or no?
• How to handle interviews
• Newspaper, radio and television interviews
• Handling a crisis
• Writing a press statement
• Working with journalists

CIVICUS aims to help civil society organisations build their capacity and achieve their goals. Based on requests from members, CIVICUS has produced several toolkits to enable organisations to improve their capacity in a number of areas - from communications and planning skills to writing funding proposals.

This toolkit is available free of charge, either on CD-ROM or as a download from the CIVICUS website; it is available in MS Word (.doc) and PDF formats.