The authors compare how the trade press and the national press in England report child abuse by concentrating on three different cycles of a particular case: discovery of the child's death, conviction of the perpetrator, and the inquiry report. They review the narrative transformation of the story in terms of the views of different individuals and agendas, and they show how different rhetorical strategies are employed to account for the facts of the case. The analysis shows that versions of social reality are constructed and communicated by elite groups, that social workers as social agents are constrained by the reporting context, and that each version of a story focuses on certain aspects of the chain of events relating to the case and uses these aspects to make strong claims. Child abuse is viewed as a critical arena for depicting important contemporary issues related to the state of the family, the role of government, and the power of professionals. 11 references