Disabled people are being demonised in the UK press, according to disabled people, campaigning groups — and even the National Union of Journalists. What is going on, and why? Paul F Cockburn asks those in the know.
It was genuine public outrage at the illegal actions carried out by some journalists — most strikingly, the ‘hacking’ of murdered teenager Milly Dowler’s mobile phone — that humbled the previously untouchable Rupert Murdoch, forced the closure of the News of the World, and established the ongoing Leveson Inquiry into “the culture, practices and ethics of the press”.
Yet Lord Justice Leveson should not simply be looking at past malpractices, according to an alliance including the Disability Hate Crime Network, the Black Triangle Anti-Defamation Campaign in Defence of Disability Rights and Inclusion London. In a joint submission to the Inquiry, they voiced “growing alarm and concern at the increasingly hostile and inaccurate portrayal of disabled people in the media,” and what they believe “are clear links between this media coverage and the rise in harassment and hate crime of disabled people”.
This has grown in the last couple of years, according to Inclusion London’s chief executive, Tracey Lazard. “We were getting increasing reports — both from disabled people’s organisations but also deaf and disabled individuals — of their concern, anxiety and anger about the increasingly negative portrayal of us in the media,” she explains. “This was really building momentum, and was quite obvious to see — you only had to pick up the Daily Mail to see that.”
BAD NEWS
Such anecdotal evidence, however, is just that — anecdotal. To better arm themselves and others campaigners, Inclusion London last year commissioned the Strathclyde Centre for Disability Research (SCDR) and the Glasgow Media Unit (GMU) — both respected teams operating within the University of Glasgow — to carry out a “robust” examination of UK press coverage of disabled people.
Researchers ultimately studied some 3,500 news stories from a range of national newspapers, published during two comparable six month periods in 2004/05 and 2010/11. “Both are times when governments [under Tony Blair and David Cameron respectively] are trying to introduce cut-backs and reductions in payment to disability, trying to reduce the number of people entitled to it,” says the SCDR’s Professor Nick Watson. The survey of news stories were supported by interviews with a several focus groups.
“Intuitively, we all felt there had been a change in the way that media was reporting disability,” Professor Watson admits, but you can sense how even he was saddened by what his team discovered. When the SCDR/GMU report, Bad News for Disabled People, was published towards the end of last year, it’s findings were unequivocal. “You were far less likely to read pejorative words — like ‘scrounger’, ‘handouts’, ‘work-shy’ and ‘cheats‘ — in 2004/05,” he says. “The idea now is that we have a lot of disabled people who are claimed to be ‘undeserving’.”
THE HOW AND THE WHY
The limits of the SCDR/GMU project mean that, while Professor Watson can quantify the changes in press coverage of disabled people, he doesn’t have evidence to suggest why they’ve happened. “We phoned up and talked to some of the journalists who had written some of the articles, and those that did talk to us wouldn’t tell us where the stories came from,” he says. “The DWP have said that they try and correct misrepresentations, so the DWP are claiming it’s not coming from them.”
According to Lazard, however, there is growing concern among Deaf and disabled people about the link between inaccurate, negative reporting in the press and briefings made by the Coalition Government and DWP. “There is a real concerted ideological aim and plan with this Government, which is to dramatically reduce the welfare state and the concepts of entitlement,” she says. “I think the building up of the myths around disability benefits fraud are softening up public opinion; there’s a political agenda at the heart of this.”
Stephen Brookes MBE, chair of the National Union of Journalist’s Disabled Members Council and founder of the Disability Hate Crime Network, agrees. “Every single press release that comes out of the DWP and the Office for Disability Issues are about the negativity and the fraud side, not about the fact that Disability Living Allowance and Incapacity Benefit are actually under-claimed,” he says.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
When approached, a spokesperson for the DWP insists: “We are very conscious of the language we use as it’s clear that the system itself has trapped many people in a spiral of welfare dependency. That’s why this Government is making such a radical overhaul of the benefits system to restore integrity and ensure that everyone who needs help and support receives it. We are absolutely committed to supporting disabled people, and whilst we already have laws in place to ensure equality, we need to work together and do more to change negative attitudes.”
Lazard, however, finds such comments at odds with the experiences of Deaf and disabled people. “There is a very strong feeling that our language and our demands — around inclusion, equality, and removing barriers in society — have been appropriated by the Government. So there’s all the language of ‘enabling’ and ‘supporting choice and control’, but the reality of what’s happening is undermining that completely.”
At the very least, according to Katharine Quarmby, campaigning journalist and author of the book Scapegoat: How We Are Failing Disabled People, the current Government has effectively given signals about disability benefits that some people are using to justify witch hunts. “We’ve never had a minister distance themselves from the unintended consequences of those policies,” she says. “I think that’s the thing that’s been missing, a political reaction to the effects of the crackdown.”
WHAT CAN BE DONE?
Given that an independent, not-for-profit group like Full Fact can find the truth about the corrupted statistics being bandied around, Professor Watson does wonder why the likes of the Daily Mail or the Daily Express don’t. “Is it because they can’t or because they don’t want to?” he asks. “Or, as one journalist we talked to said; is it basically that a lot of journalists are very lazy — if they get fed a story, they’ll use it?”
Lazard firmly believes that we currently have a national press that simply isn’t willing to research and put forward any other views. For Brookes, there’s a basic failing in the profession. “What is investigative journalism? It’s about looking at both sides of the story — that isn’t exactly rocket science but, all too often, it isn’t being done,” he says. “We do need to get a balance. We know there’s fraud; but for each story of fraud, there should be an equally balanced one about somebody who is actually struggling to survive.”
Brookes was instrumental in getting the NUJ to issue a statement urging its members to “support and sustain fair and balanced reporting of matters relating to disabled people”, but accepts that plenty of those responsible for negative stories aren’t union members. So it is down to everyone to do what they can. “I think that [we need] lots of people doing what they can in their fields of strength,” says Lazard. “In terms of the political/ideological agenda, it’s crucial that the disability rights movement and its allies continue to highlight and reveal the impact of this approaach to cutting the welfare state and entitlement.”
MORE:
http://www.inclusionlondon.co.uk
http://fullfact.org
http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/research/sociology/strathclydecentrefordisabilityresearch
First published by Disability magazine, February/March 2012; read more here.
