Media needs to challenge perceptions – not create them
26 July 2012
Research published last week revealed that negative reporting
by newspapers of people with disabilities has increased in the past
6 years. This will have come as little surprise to anyone with a
disability or who works with people with disabilities. The report,
'Bad News for Disabled People: how newspapers are
reporting disability', commissioned by disability equality
organisation Inclusion London, compared print media articles from
2004/5 and 2010/11. The research showed a fall in the proportion of
articles that describe disabled people in sympathetic and deserving
terms. Additionally, researchers found that stories that document
the 'real life' experiences of disabled people had also decreased.
Meanwhile, the number of articles focusing on disability benefit
fraud increased almost threefold from 2.8% in 2004/5 to 6.1% in
2010/11. Allied to this, a significant increase in the use of
pejorative language to describe disabled people was found. This
backs up the anecdotal evidence I've seen - which has been building
up for some time - from speaking to people, from posts on blog
sites and from comments on social media platforms such as Twitter.
'Bad News…' is not the first report of this kind, either. A Scope
survey earlier in the year also found
deteriorating public attitudes towards people with
disabilities. Again, the impact of the welfare reform debate's
focus on disabled people as scroungers on the public's perception
of people with disabilities was highlighted. It is a worrying
trend. For many years, learning disability groups have worked hard
to tackle the stigma around learning disabilities and have made
considerable headway. But stigma does still exist in certain
sections of the public and this reporting trend will do nothing to
help. People with learning disabilities have limitless potential,
as everyone in the sector knows. But the general public does not
necessarily share this perception- and they need to be told more
about what can be achieved. The positive stories about people with
learning disabilities who have made a success of their lives are
out there - not least in the pages of Learning Disability
Today - but just don't seem to fit the current news agenda. In
fact, that agenda seems to be increasingly focused on benefit
fraud. As Nick Watson from the Centre for Disability at the
University of Glasgow, which conducted the study alongside the
University's Glasgow Media Group, noted, when focus groups were
asked to describe a typical story in the newspapers disability
benefit fraud was the most popular theme mentioned. "Participants
in the focus groups all claimed that levels of fraud were very much
higher than they are in reality, with some suggesting that up to
70% of claimants were fraudulent. They justified these claims by
reference to articles they had read in newspapers." This
demonstrates how powerful newspapers can be in shaping people's
perceptions. But with power comes responsibility. The media should
be aware of its impact on public perceptions and the damage that
negative articles can do. They should think more about the stories
they feature. The vast majority of disability benefit claimants are
not scroungers. People with learning disabilities do want to work,
and can be every bit as effective as non-disabled people in work,
when given the chance. But if the newspapers and other media don't
report this, and continue to focus simply on the negative, the
general public won't have the true picture and attitudes will
continue to deteriorate.
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