PHILADELPHIA — An NBC News story with John Fetterman that predominantly focused on the stroke survivor’s health is drawing sharp criticism over how it described the reporter’s interview with the Pennsylvania Senate candidate.
While the full conversation covered a sweep of issues — from abortion rights to crime to inflation — the story was largely framed around Fetterman’s health issues since his May 13 stroke.
Fetterman has been dealing with auditory processing and word retrieval issues since his stroke and has been open about how he uses closed captions to ensure he understands questions in interviews.
In its Tuesday night story, NBC News alleged the lieutenant governor “still struggles to understand what he hears and to speak clearly” despite later noting that Fetterman only “occasionally stuttered” during the interview, which was filmed with reporter Dasha Burns at Fetterman’s home on Friday.
Auditory processing isn’t an issue with hearing, but the way the brain processes words.
“That auditory processing, where I’ll hear someone speaking, but sometimes, I won’t be precise on what exactly they’re saying, I use captioning,” Fetterman told Burns.
Fetterman has not directly addressed the interview on social media, but did say in a tweet Wednesday morning that, “Recovering from a stroke in public isn’t easy,” and went on to say that he’s “going to be much better in January,” the month in which new senators will be sworn in.
While NBC News billed its sit-down as an exclusive, Fetterman has done a number of interviews with media outlets since his return to the campaign trail, but this is the first to focus heavily on his speech issues.
Other journalists who have interviewed Fetterman have criticized the story, noting that he had no comprehensive problems or significant speaking issues when they spoke with him.
Providing accommodations to interviewees is considered best practice, according to the National Center on Disability and Journalism. Another best practice is to “emphasize abilities, not limitations,” according to a guide on writing about people with disabilities published by the Research and Training Center on Independent Living at the University of Kansas.
When Eric Garcia, a journalist and the author of We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation, saw preview clips, he was pleased to see they provided him with closed captioning. Too often, accommodations are seen as special treatment when they are a means for equal treatment, Garcia said.
“Fetterman is a public official, and he should be held accountable, and he should answer the questions that he’s asked,” he said. “Closed captioning is a way to hold him accountable.”
But Garcia was disappointed by how the full segment was framed and by some of the online reaction.
Fetterman has ramped up his campaign activity recently, often holding several large rallies a week, along with a handful of smaller meetings with community members. At the rallies, he speaks without a teleprompter, and has taken to preempting criticisms about verbal stumbles by telling the audience he knows his opponent, Republican Mehmet Oz, hopes to use those gaffes against him.
“I guarantee it, there’s at least one person here filming me, hoping to catch me missing some words,” he said at a rally in Bucks on Sunday.
While it’s clear he struggles to get some words out, his stump speeches have seemed more fluid since August when he first returned to the trail.
At smaller events, like a gathering in Southwest Philadelphia on Monday, Fetterman took pictures and shook hands with attendees and then spoke in front of a group packed into a crowded, noisy restaurant. He didn’t take any questions from a reporter there.
In the NBC interview, Fetterman emphasized that he is on the road to a full recovery, saying his health would not impact his ability to serve in the Senate.
The Fetterman campaign in September released some results from a cognitive test that it said showed his brain is functioning normally for a person his age.
Garcia said Fetterman should be judged on the merits of his candidacy and policy positions. But the idea of reasonable accommodations is so unfamiliar in day-to-day lives that when someone like Fetterman needs them, people are quick to judge, he said. These negative perceptions could have implications beyond a Senate campaign.
“If you make accommodations seem like a negative, then people are going to be less likely to ask for that,” he said.
Dani Stanford is a 31-year-old criminal justice doctoral student at Temple University who is currently on leave due to illness and disability. When she arrived, the school approved her accommodations but she was at first reluctant to use them in her classes. She said past experiences made her afraid of being ostracized.
“People tend to think that you’re getting special favors or that you are not doing as much work,” she said.
She has auditory processing issues that make her prefer written communication. When she saw Fetterman do an interview with closed captions, it gave her hope that these types of accommodations are becoming more socially acceptable.
“It’s rare to see representation of people that have the same struggles or disabilities as you,” Stanford said.
But from the moment Fetterman had his stroke, she expected people to make ableist statements – prejudicial statements against people with disabilities.
More than 2.6 million adults with disabilities live in Pennsylvania, about 1 in 4 residents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sherri Landis, the executive director of The Arc of Pennsylvania, an advocacy organization for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, said some people with disabilities are reluctant to ask for accommodations because they fear the response.
“It is difficult to disclose, because you’re judged based on your disability,” she said.
Instead of ingraining these misconceptions, Landis hopes that Fetterman’s high-profile use of basic accommodations can become a teachable moment on how basic accommodations are easy to provide. As a first step, companies, organizations and government agencies could look at how they put out information and ensure that it is accessible to people who communicate in different ways.
“If you figure accommodation for people with disabilities, you figured it out for everyone,” she said.
