Blogging Against Disablism Day 2006

The topic of my contribution to this year's event is disablism in the media. We all know that there are numerous problems in this area. Disabled people are portrayed in stereotypical ways, as tragic victims or as brave heroes, and disability rights issues are almost completely ignored. However, rather than enumerating once again the many ways in which these issues manifest themselves, I will focus on the tricky subjects of why things remain that way and how a solution can be found. Is there anything that we can do to bring about a change?

It is usually assumed that the problem will go away as soon as more disabled people are employed by the media sector. The idea is that they will bring their knowledge and experience to bear, raise issues of portrayal with their editors, and find new and challenging stories. In my opinion, this reassuring viewpoint misunderstands the relationship that the media has with its consumers. It is clear that the Daily Telegraph would become more progressive in tone if it employed more left-wing journalists, and the Guardian more right-wing if it employed more Tories, but the point is that they choose not to make such appointments, for precisely these reasons. By and large, people do not consume media in order to gain new perspectives from people with different outlooks to themselves. Rather, they want to be comforted that the way they think is largely correct. Conversely, while the papers know that they have considerable power to shape the views of their readers, they also know that it would be very detrimental to their circulation figures if they seriously attempted to do so.

There are always fifth-columnists who find their way into the media of the other side. I was recently shocked to discover that Melanie Phillips, now discharging bile at the Daily Mail, once worked for the Guardian. However, when dealing with minority politics, these kinds of infiltrations are rather easier to avoid. There are many exceptions of course, but it is obvious that a woman is more likely to be a feminist than a man, a black person more interested in racial equality than a white person, and someone who is disabled keener on disability rights than someone who is not. In order to maintain their editorial purity, all that media organisations need to do is to avoid giving any important jobs to members of these high risk groups.

To be fair, minorities are not all dealt with in quite the same way. It may even be true to say that the majority of the people working in the media today are women. However, except for Rebekah Wade at the Sun, this is not true of people in high-level positions of editorial influence. And of course, one or two people from ethnic minorities are allowed to slip through the net into very minor roles, as long as they provide convincing evidence of not being troublemakers. Disabled people have to have very brown noses indeed in order to advance but it is just about possible, as David Blunkett showed with his political success (notwithstanding his weakness for blondes). Nevertheless, this had the serious disadvantage that he was completely unwilling to give public support for disability rights. If disabled people must leave their values at the door in order to be allowed to pass through, then there is little point in encouraging more of us to do so.

But what about newsreaders, I hear you cry? Aren't Little Englanders always writing to complain that there are not enough Caucasians reading the news any more (by which they presumably mean people from Azerbaijan, in the Caucasus mountains)? Yes, there are a few ethnic minority anchors and I am confident that, within a few years, there will be disabled newsreaders too. However, do not mistake this statement for optimism about the future. It will take much longer before black, Asian and disabled people will have the opportunity to actually write what is to appear on the autocue, rather than simply to read the words out into the camera.

It is also the case that the media sector are beginning to employ more disabled people in auxiliary positions, where there is no danger that they will be able to influence editorial policy. There are some very talented journalists working as glorified accountants for media organisations. We should applaud this to some extent, while realising that it is motivated by fear of litigation rather than by morality, and not be fooled that it will be of any benefit to disabled people as a whole, in terms of raising awareness of the issues that concern us.

I'd like to finish on an upbeat note by thinking about the area in which we do have power. We are also consumers, and form a considerable portion of the market share. If anything is to change, we must be more demanding about the way in which we want the media to behave. We must not be fooled by tokenistic gestures, such as weak attempts by non-disabled people to engage with disability issues. We must insist upon journalists, columnists, presenters and actors who are themselves disabled. We should also be more sceptical and critical of employment targets, and demand that they be broken down in more detail, in terms of the people who actually work in producing the media itself, as well as in support roles. We need to challenge sloppy language and stereotypes, not because we want to be politically correct, but simply because they are evidence that disabled people have not been consulted. If we make no objections, we simply confirm to the media that they do not need to give us jobs.

Finally, there is another ray of hope. The media is fragmenting, and the dominance of the big players is diminishing. We all write blogs without the need for an editor and soon we will be able to broadcast TV programmes online, without having to go through a channel commissioner. This is why events such as Blogging Against Disability Day are so important. We have the chance to address precisely those issues that the media so readily avoids and, perhaps, to begin to have a small effect on the way that they do things.