On Friday, the disability charity Scope published an open letter to the media - demanding that the way disabled people are written and spoken about changes.
For a long time, a good portion of the media has pushed the narrative that people on out-of-work benefits are scroungers, which slowed for a while - but they’ve been buoyed on again recently by the DWP “benefit fraud crackdown”, which I debunked last week.
After a lull in horrid headlines about people on disabled out-of-work benefits such as Universal Credit and Employment Support Allowance, I naively assumed that the media was learning and growing. But instead, it seems that they were just waiting for something else to latch onto to blame us for.
Sure enough, the government and opposition handed them a tasty morsel. “We could’ve afforded the extra cost of living payments if it wasn’t for all them lying so-called disableds” they hissed, and certain parts of the media lapped it up.
The newest “benefit fraud” push by the Tories meant that the parts of the media that hate poor people could once again spout that all disabled people who don’t work are doing it because they’re lazy or workshy.
And now we’re seeing the hateful parts of the media's favourite game “How many of them could work? How are so many tricking the system? We must make it tougher. They don’t deserve anything”.
As Scope and so many of us disability activists regularly point out, these dangerous narratives ignore how the welfare system fails disabled people and the struggles we face.
Instead, Scope wants the media to focus more on how many disabled people die because of the cruel benefit assessment process and how long and awful the system can take. The charity also thinks more attention should be given to how distressing communicating with the DWP can be for disabled people. They also say there needs to be attention on the fact that you can work whilst on some disability benefits.
While I agree on most fronts I don’t think we need to be talking about whether or not disabled people are working and sectioning us off this way.
Why should our ability to work be tied to whether we deserve to survive? Surely we should be protecting those who need the extra safety net, not trying to pull it away from them and let them drown.
As a disabled person in the media, it’s absolutely heartbreaking to constantly read what my own profession thinks of me and people like me.
When I came on board at The Mirror for Disabled Britain I truly believed that I could help make a positive change in the representation of disabled people in the media. I am slowly seeing the good parts of the media trying to learn and do better - but there’s still so much deep-rooted ableism.
While I do think I and other amazing disabled writers in the mainstream like Dr Frances Ryan, James Moore, Lucy Webster, Lottie Jackson and the Mirror's own Mariyam Quaisar and Anna Morell are helping to bring disabled issues to the fore, there’s still so much to do and it shouldn’t just be down to us.
The media is allowed to continue its dangerous narratives of disabled people because the biggest media regulator IPSO refuses to create guidelines on reporting disability.
I’m still trying to get the regulator to introduce guidelines. But at all turns they’ve used their own rules against me, effectively allowing this rampant hatred and violence to continue.
Scope is urging that “It’s time to go beyond the negative framing and headlines and hear the reality of disabled people’s lives”, and I couldn’t agree more.
When the cost of living crisis is disproportionately affecting disabled people the most and our government is instead threatening fraud raids, we need to be hearing from disabled people.
But most importantly, we need to dismantle this dangerous narrative - because it’s killing disabled people.
