Diabetes UK Needs You

Main Category: Diabetes
Article Date: 30 Aug 2009 - 0:00 PDT

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We are looking for media volunteers from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities to help us raise awareness of diabetes.

A media volunteer is someone who is willing to be interviewed by a journalist. When there is a diabetes news story in the papers or on TV or radio, the story often includes an interview with a person with diabetes. The media likes to have a 'human face' to the story, somebody who the audience can relate to.

Making research relevant

For example, if there is a news story about a research breakthrough, a media volunteer can show what relevance the research may offer to people with diabetes, instead of the story just being about scientific facts and figures.

Please get in touch

If you are interested, please contact the Media Relations team on 020 7424 1165 or email press@diabetes.org.uk. We are specifically looking for people with diabetes from Black, Asian and ethnic minority backgrounds as these communities are often underrepresented in the media.

What to expect

Journalists often come to the Media Relations team at Diabetes UK requesting a media volunteer. However, it is very difficult to specify how often a media volunteer would be needed, as requests from journalists vary from time to time.

Some of our current media volunteers may be contacted by the Media Relations team several times a year. Another aspect to bear in mind is that the media sometimes requests interviews at short notice, maybe a few hours.

This is particularly the case for TV. It is also hard to advise how long an interview will last.

Your experience of diabetes

As a rough guide, an interview for a newspaper or a magazine (which is usually done over the phone) lasts between five and 20 minutes. A live interview for radio or TV rarely goes on for more than three minutes. A pre-recorded interview for radio may be a few minutes longer, while a pre-recorded TV interview lasts around 30 minutes.

In your own words

The interview will not be about clinical or medical knowledge. It's about your experience of living with diabetes.

Recent examples

Some recent examples where media volunteers have helped us to raise awareness include:

'Rates of diabetes soar' - on BBC News. You can view a clip from BBC TV news and read their online article on the BBC website. This was a response to our story 'Rise in new cases of diabetes' on 24 February.

'Diabetes UK children's lobby' - on BBC South Today. You can view this clip on YouTube. The story covered our children's lobby of Parliament as part of our campaign to help children living with diabetes in school.

Diabetes UK on YouTube

Visit Diabetes UK's YouTube channel for other video clips of our media coverage, and other short films and animations about diabetes and Diabetes UK.

Source
Diabetes UK

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