They say pictures paint a thousand words, but sometimes numbers do a lot of talking as well. The story of disabled people’s exclusion from the media, for example, is portrayed powerfully by the figures contained in the University of Lancaster’s Disabilty in British Newspapers report [Alibri; Semino].

Of the 17,535 newspaper stories covering the topic of disability in 2021/22, says the report, only 11% included quotes from disabled people [Alibri; Semino].

For the most part, journalists spoke to others. Non-disabled carers, family members, charity workers and other professionals – these people talked to the media on our behalf.

Exclusion wasn’t the only problem either. The framings used in these articles were often damaging, with the medical model being used in many of cases.

This, of course, is the ideology that describes disability as being the result of individuals’ physical or mental ‘defects’ rather than society’s failure to understand, accept and adapt to people’s differences.

Closely related to the medical model is the ‘against-all-odds’ framing, which suggests disabled people can overcome any challenges accompanying their conditions/impairments if they have the required fortitude of character.

This framing appeared in an article about the recently deceased actor RJ Mitte, who played Walter White Jr, the son of chemistry teacher turned drugs kingpin Walter White, played by Bryan Cranston, in the blockbuster series Breaking Bad.

Commenting on RJ Mitte after his recent death by suicide, Cranston said the actor, who had cerebral palsy, ‘never – ever – allowed [his disability] to be an excuse for anything.’

The dangerous message behind this apparently positive remark is that those disabled people who say they can’t do certain tasks and/or who ask for adjustments must be using their condition as an excuse for task-avoidance or ‘underperformance’.

With disabled people’s voices and stories being so often excluded and/or misrepresented in the media, it is difficult to counter these damaging narratives.

What opportunities do we have to spread the social model message: that disabled people would stand a far greater chance of flourishing and reaching their full potential if only we did not live in a society that excluded and discriminated against us by failing to understand, accept and adapt to our needs?

One organisation that is fighting back is Inclusion Barnet, which has begun training disabled media spokespeople as part of its Campaign for Disability Justice.

Our aim is to start building those relationships so that journalists talk to a disabled person and stop perhaps going to an expert in a white coat – Cat Whitehouse.

Cat Whitehouse, the Campaign for Disability Justice manager at Inclusion Barnet, told CDA: “We believe disabled people should be included in media stories about us because the people who know most about an issue are the people who live it every day. If disabled people aren’t heard in the media, the public get weird ideas about us.”

Cat added: “The course is all about making sure disabled people feel able, confident, safe to tell our own stories and speak our own truth to the world.”

Cat further said: “I have worked with the BBC, with Sky News, with Channel 4, ITV and ITN and our aim is to start building those relationships so that when journalists think there’s a story about disabled people, they think they should talk to a disabled person and should stop, perhaps, going to that expert in a white coat or a carer or a charity. And they will hopefully start thinking about talking to disabled people directly and reaching people through the project.”

 

Amy Butterworth, one of the Disability Spokesperson trainees, told CDA she joined the programme after the onset of long-Covid in her late 30s gave her a heightened awareness of how easy it is to become disabled at any time and how much disability discrimination goes on.

Amy, 42, said: “When we’re written about, it seems to be by people who don’t like us. So I thought, why don’t I speak up for us then?”
Amy added: “The more we’re heard, the more people can start relating to us and including us in decision-making.”

Amy further said: “If people are taught to be ashamed or dismissive of disabled people, then that’s how they’re going to treat themselves or their loved ones when that happens to them.”

As Amy so insightfully points out, if negative, misleading narratives go unchallenged they become accepted as truths, sometimes even by the very people they target. Unless journalists interview disabled people, they will continue to misrepresent us in the media.

Those disabled people and allies who have managed to hold on to our own truths in the face of the dominant narratives weighing down on us must get our voices heard more widely – and that’s why the Campaign for Disability Justice’s spokesperson training is so vitally important.