Research published last week revealed that negative reportingby newspapers of people with disabilities has increased in the past6 years. This will have come as little surprise to anyone with adisability or who works with people with disabilities. The report,’Bad News for Disabled People: how newspapers arereporting disability’, commissioned by disability equalityorganisation Inclusion London, compared print media articles from2004/5 and 2010/11. The research showed a fall in the proportion ofarticles that describe disabled people in sympathetic and deservingterms. Additionally, researchers found that stories that documentthe ‘real life’ experiences of disabled people had also decreased.Meanwhile, the number of articles focusing on disability benefitfraud increased almost threefold from 2.8% in 2004/5 to 6.1% in2010/11. Allied to this, a significant increase in the use ofpejorative language to describe disabled people was found. Thisbacks up the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen – which has been buildingup for some time – from speaking to people, from posts on blogsites and from comments on social media platforms such as Twitter.’Bad News…’ is not the first report of this kind, either. A Scopesurvey earlier in the year also found deteriorating public attitudes towards people withdisabilities. Again, the impact of the welfare reform debate’sfocus on disabled people as scroungers on the public’s perceptionof people with disabilities was highlighted. It is a worryingtrend. For many years, learning disability groups have worked hardto tackle the stigma around learning disabilities and have madeconsiderable headway. But stigma does still exist in certainsections of the public and this reporting trend will do nothing tohelp. People with learning disabilities have limitless potential,as everyone in the sector knows. But the general public does notnecessarily share this perception- and they need to be told moreabout what can be achieved. The positive stories about people withlearning disabilities who have made a success of their lives areout there – not least in the pages of Learning DisabilityToday – but just don’t seem to fit the current news agenda. Infact, that agenda seems to be increasingly focused on benefitfraud. As Nick Watson from the Centre for Disability at theUniversity of Glasgow, which conducted the study alongside theUniversity’s Glasgow Media Group, noted, when focus groups wereasked to describe a typical story in the newspapers disabilitybenefit fraud was the most popular theme mentioned. “Participantsin the focus groups all claimed that levels of fraud were very muchhigher than they are in reality, with some suggesting that up to70% of claimants were fraudulent. They justified these claims byreference to articles they had read in newspapers.” Thisdemonstrates how powerful newspapers can be in shaping people’sperceptions. But with power comes responsibility. The media shouldbe aware of its impact on public perceptions and the damage thatnegative articles can do. They should think more about the storiesthey feature. The vast majority of disability benefit claimants arenot 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’treport this, and continue to focus simply on the negative, thegeneral public won’t have the true picture and attitudes willcontinue to deteriorate.
