In-person interviews are always best — or are they?

Although we journalists have become more comfortable with virtual interviews over the years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic started, most journalists will still say in-person interviews are best. There are lots of good reasons for this: they let us, as journalists, observe the sources in real time, get answers that are less prepared, avoid problems with technology, and use or observe body language and other forms of communication. However, the advantages of in-person interviews don’t always hold true when working with disabled sources. The following goes into some of the reasons why that might be.

I’m going to start with some hard and fast rules. I can’t make you follow them, of course, but I do think that, in the context of disability and given an airborne pandemic and other health concerns, they’ll help you to not only report ethically and morally but also get better stories. Here they are:

• Do not insist on an in-person interview if you or anyone on your team that day is sick or thinks they might be.
• Do not insist on an in-person interview if your source is sick or thinks they might be.
• Do not insist on an in-person interview if your source tells you it’s difficult or dangerous for them to travel that day, no matter the reason.
• Do not insist on an in-person interview if your source tells you they communicate better by other means, such as by phone, email, text message or chat.

To potential objections to these rules, here are my responses.

“But my deadline!”

As with any story, for you as a journalist, your deadline is your problem, not your source’s problem. I’ve found that if I explain to sources the reasons for any urgency, the sources will do their best to accommodate me, but that only works if it’s a two-way street and I’m also willing to give a little, such as by changing the time or switching interview formats. I also have a track record of producing stories that centre disabled voices, long-standing relationships in disabled communities and lived experience I’m open about. I’ve received criticism of my disability coverage, too, and much of it has been warranted. But, generally, when I’m transparent about why I need an interview that day, sources who know me a little will give me an interview that day. Or, if they can’t, they’ll suggest someone who might and/or give me secondary sources to draw on. (Important caveat here: I ask for an interview on the same day only when it’s truly necessary and I can’t find a workaround on my own. If everything is an emergency, nothing is an emergency.)

You can’t control what lived experience of disability you have. (Most people are going to learn this sooner or later. Oh, boy, will they ever.) But, by being trustworthy, you can control how you build relationships with sources and your reputation within disabled communities. Being trustworthy is about far more than just making your deadlines. If sources trust you to tell the truth in your reporting, they’ll trust you to tell the truth when you say you need the interview right away. You can’t build that trust, though, if you are rigid and inflexible from the start and make your problems your sources’ problems. Sources are more likely to open up to you if you try to understand their lives. That holds true for all sources, not just disabled ones.

“But things are so much easier in the studio!”

Good thing you chose a challenging profession and can adapt — and that, in fact, adaptation and making changes as you go is a major part of the job!

In all seriousness, I know how hard it is to get a shooting or publishing schedule together and how hectic and busy the day can get as we work on multiple stories at the same time, deal with late-breaking news that lays waste to our plans and scramble to find replacements after key sources decide not to speak on the record after all. Taking time out of a busy day to accommodate an interview subject or guest can seem like the last straw, especially when your editor is wondering why you haven’t already filed, your camera is across town, you’re producing a panel segment and the other two people you’ve invited are already on their way to the studio, or you really need a government response and that comms person was supposed to get back to you an hour ago. I know. I know sometimes you won’t be able to make things work with that particular source and you will have to pivot to someone or something else, a process that will also make more work for you.

But I think you should try to adapt anyway — because I also know who gets called most often for an interview when we journalists are in trouble and need to get the story done now. Those possible sources are the people journalists know because they have a platform already, know the “rules” of media appearances, will give good copy or great sound bites. They’re the people we see as “reliable” and who have come through before, the people who can drop everything and rush camera-ready to the studio, give you exactly the interview you need, and then get on with their day.

I have nothing against interviewing those sources and doing so in the studio. I love working with those sources, because they’ve saved me many times. If I want to know something about disability law in Ontario, my first call is pretty much always David Lepofsky of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) Alliance or the good folks at the ARCH Disability Law Centre, and my second call is the one I didn’t call the first time[1]. Those people virtually always get back to me with things I hadn’t thought about, and I never conclude an interview with them without having learned multiple new things. (Apologies in advance to Lepofsky and ARCH, who may get a lot more journalist calls after this.) We journalists need those sources.

But if we journalists call and interview only such seasoned sources, we don’t get the full picture of disability and thus don’t present that full picture to our audiences. We don’t get the people who might be coming in with new perspectives, who don’t have law degrees or PhDs or thousands of followers on social media, or who can’t just get up and go. And our stories are the worse for it. Lepofsky has done a lot for the disabled community in Canada, not only by doing advocacy work and legal work, but also by personally suing multiple government agencies he says have breached the AODA. He’s won many of these cases. Some he has lost. But what about those disabled people who can’t afford to sue and don’t know the act backward and forward like Lepofsky does and weren’t the ones who fought for it in the first place? Lepofsky generally represents himself in these cases, a right nearly everyone can also exercise. But those people won’t have Lepofsky for a lawyer. They also won’t have access to Lepofsky’s extensive list of media contacts.

I don’t mean to say that any broadcast story with sources that were easier to find and interview will more readily be seen as less accurate. On the contrary, as journalists we know that we work hard to get it right. It’s that, in the aggregate and over time, these stories with seasoned, reliable sources add up to paint a picture of disability — and therefore of society — that misses key elements, meaning that the public is less well-informed.

 
What does that look like? Let’s use advocacy organizations as an example. If you always talk to one disability advocacy organization, it will, of course, use some of your airtime to advance its agenda. That’s what advocacy organizations do. It’s their job. But we journalists should remember that a spokesperson for an advocacy organization is a spokesperson for that organization and its specific goals and point of view — not a spokesperson for a particular disability, for that person’s specific disability, or for disability in general. We journalists are generally pretty good at recognizing the differing interests of journalists and communications professionals, holding them up to scrutiny when called for while recognizing our usefulness and help to each other. We need communications people, and they need us, but our relationship works best when there’s a degree of mutual skepticism involved. But, for whatever reason, this skepticism tends to go completely out the window with stories involving disabled people, particularly stories that touch on areas of deep disagreement among and between disabled people. This can get very weird very quickly, as it did when a prominent anchor at a prominent Canadian news organization posted a Twitter thread about medical assistance in dying and the fact that people are requesting it due to poverty and the lack of stable housing and other supports. The anchor then mentioned asking Dying with Dignity Canada, an advocacy and lobby group for medical aid in dying, for comment, which the group provided. This presented Dying with Dignity as though it were the official arbiter or provider of medical assistance in dying in Canada. (It’s neither.) Worse yet, it gave the organization the appearance of having official authority in this sphere, as a government source would. (It doesn’t.) This then had the effect of framing, on the one hand, the people quoted in the social-media thread as individual sources going through personal problems, and on the other hand, the organization, Dying with Dignity, as a group with official weight behind it. This is a subtle distinction, but it matters. In fact, some of the individual sources quoted in the thread were members of other advocacy organizations, such as Disability Filibuster or Not Dead Yet, the Resistance. Which side of an issue is being presented as “expert” and which as “personal/emotional” is always a question you should be asking.
To combat this tendency to cover disability narrowly, look at your interviews and sources over time, going back months or years. Do a disability audit of your own reporting and your newsroom’s coverage.

• What was reported and/or broadcast but didn’t make it on the air, on the website, or in print?
• Which are the sources who fell through at the last minute? Did you invite them back for an interview?
• Who gets consulted over and over again as an “expert” and who does not?
• Could you find and interview a source different from the one you usually use?
• Can you challenge yourself to find experts other than “your guy?” (And why is this type of source almost always a guy?)

It’s good practice to broaden your pool of sources — and thus broaden your interviews — no matter what happens or what else is going on: if you think that expert sources all have the same opinions, you’re very much mistaken. If you thought to yourself, “But why is she talking about expert sources when I thought we were talking about disabled sources?” — congratulations! That’s a form of unconscious ableist bias. Happens to us all.

 
An important question to ask yourself when undertaking an audit of your own work involves asking to whom you give the benefit of the doubt and why.

• Whose claims do you not let pass without scrutiny and why? 
• Whom do you consider trustworthy and why?
• Could unconscious bias or poor communication play a role in your answers?

These questions will continue to play an important role as we examine considerations related to evaluating credibility in the field.

I’m aware that in describing an audit, I’ve just described actual years of work — work that will slow down the newsroom’s processes and take time away from daily reporting, at least at first. But in the long run, putting in that work will make you a better reporter and build your credibility with disabled communities — something journalism, as a whole, desperately needs.

“But do you know how hard it is to change plans on the fly like that?”

Oh, I laugh in disabled, and imagine the Old Nan, “sweet summer child” meme. But seriously, in addition to being a journalist myself, appearing in print and occasionally on air, I have also appeared on other people’s programs and served as a source for others’ stories, most of the time about disability issues. I decided it would be fun to go over the number of things that had to go right — and the number of people involved — in order for me to make these media appearances.

 
So, here’s an imaginary scenario based on several real experiences I’ve had or have been told about by others: I’ve been invited to appear on a local morning radio show the next day. The producer says they’re excited to have me speak because they’ve heard me before and think I could do a good job demonstrating the importance of accessibility. They wonder whether I can make a 6:20 a.m. airtime. However, 6 a.m. is the earliest that someone can book Para Transpo, Ottawa’s transit service for those who have difficulty using conventional transit for a variety of reasons, meaning that the earliest arrival time at the radio station is 7 a.m. So, I ask whether the interview could take place after 7 a.m. The producer comes back with a 7:20 start time. “Is that arrival time or time on air?” That’s on air, I hear. That means I still have to book my Para Transpo for 6:15 to get there — and that’s cutting it close. I have taken Para Transpo before, and I know that whatever can go wrong, usually does.

 
What about my trip after the interview, from the radio station to my home again, to start my own workday? I ask. The producer says that they should be wrapped up by 7:30, unless they have to move things around.

 
I ask, “So what if they have to move things around?”

 
The producer tells me I could be at the station until 8 a.m. at the latest. Maybe I could get the bus to come at 7:45 and wait for me. Would that be okay? They want to make sure I can get to work on time.

 
I find this charmingly naive. I explain gently that Para Transpo doesn’t work that way; you can’t book for a specific time and assume that the bus will be there at that exact time.

Rather, you have a 30-minute booking window during which the shared-ride, book-in-advance bus service can arrive at any time, but the driver will wait for you for only three minutes. You’re also supposed to wait outside during your pickup window so the driver can see you; the driver won’t always come inside to get you and definitely won’t go searching throughout the building. Could the producer give me a smaller window of time to wrap up, because whatever time the producer gives me, I’ll have to book after that and then potentially wait a while?

I can feel the producer starting to get annoyed and confused. I can tell they’re worried about the viability of the segment. They say I should give myself half an hour leeway.

 
Okay. So 8:15 should work for a pickup for my return trip. “I’ll have to get back to you,” I say. “I just need to make sure I can get transportation and attendant care lined up.” The producer isn’t happy about that. They want to have their guests confirmed right away, and it’s getting late in the day. As an alternative, I suggest dialing into the studio from my home.
No, says the producer — that would be a lot of work for the team, and they don’t have time to go into the field.

 
“Oh, sure,” I say. “I totally understand. I just have to coordinate other people’s schedules too and that will take time.”

“Well,” says the producer, “I need to know now. You understand what it’s like to book a show.”

I agree that I do. The producer says they can give me an hour to confirm my plans — otherwise, they’ll go with someone else.

I start by calling and texting my morning attendant; there’s no point in booking Para Transpo if I won’t be able to get up and on the bus. My attendant says she might be able to arrive early for her shift but has to see whether she can get a ride, since her partner, who works nights, has the car. Can I look for backups while she texts? I text my other staff. One person immediately says no; the others don’t respond right away.

 
I decide to book my transit while I wait. I can always cancel if I don’t get an attendant for the earlier time. While I’m on hold with Para Transpo, my morning attendant confirms she can come early. Things look promising so far. I’m on hold for about 45 minutes, and Para Transpo can’t accommodate my requested time of 6:15 a.m., so I have to go with 6:00. That’s going to be tight, but I can do it. Barely. Just in time for the producer, I call the show to confirm I’ll be at the studio for the interview.

The next morning, I am exhausted. I usually get up between 6 and 6:30 a.m., and now I have to be ready to get out the door before 6:00, which means I have to get up at 4:00, and my poor attendant has to wake up for 3:00. I also couldn’t go to bed early in preparation, because my night attendant wasn’t available for an earlier shift, so there was no way to make up for lost sleep. I move slowly, so I don’t have time to eat, and going to the bathroom takes some time, especially since I’m doing that at a time way earlier than my normal bathroom routine. (Yes, a bathroom routine is a thing I have. But it’s more important to take my time with that than anything else. I don’t want to rush through it and then be caught out without bathroom assistance afterward, which could happen if I don’t give myself enough time. I’ll spare you a description of the consequences.)

 
It’s harder than usual to transfer from bed to chair to toilet back to chair, because fatigue exacerbates my spasticity and chronic pain. Para Transpo is early, and even though they have to wait until my window begins at 6:00 and then three minutes into it — so, until 6:03 a.m. — it’s not a great idea to bank on their waiting for me. The driver is annoyed that I take a second to grab my work bag.

 
Finally, I’m on the bus. The studio is about a 15-minute drive from my house. That being said, it takes an hour to get there, because the driver has to pick someone else up on the way. I call the producer to tell them I’m on my way, and they say not to worry — they’ve already moved my segment later in the show for completely unrelated reasons.

 
A ball of dread forms in my stomach. “How much later?” I ask, in the tone of someone facing certain doom.

 
The producer has moved the segment to overlap with the Para Transpo pickup window that I had already booked for the return trip so, after hanging up with the producer and unleashing a stress-induced storm of whispered profanity, now I have to call Para Transpo again to request a later pickup — not a sure thing, and such a request is invariably treated as a huge imposition. But they will grant it this time, so catastrophe has been averted again. I text the producer again: “No problem at all! Looking forward to it!”

When I get to the studio, the producer is waiting for me, stressed out even though the station has pushed the segment back, and I feel as if I’ve failed somehow. We go up and do the interview and, with prep and on-air time combined, it takes about 15 minutes. I try to make some useful points. I’m so stressed out about Para Transpo that I forget to be nervous about actually being interviewed, so it flows well. I think it goes okay; it would have been better if I hadn’t been so tired, if I could have spent more time explaining the effects of policies I’m ostensibly responsible for communicating to the audience — and less time discussing whether they make me angry and sad.

“There,” says the producer. “In and out. That wasn’t so hard, was it? You’ll barely miss any work at all!” They give me a big smile, relieved everything worked out.

 
I nod and thank them for thinking of me, knowing that my revised pickup window doesn’t start for an hour and is a half-hour long, so I could be there for a while. Good thing I brought a couple of books, at least one of which is useful for my job, which I am technically supposed to be doing right now. Because journalists work here, there is a coffee shop, and the blissful aroma makes my mouth water, but I don’t dare buy any, because of the gap in attendant care. (See the earlier discussion of bathroom-related consequences.)

It ends up being closer to two hours before Para Transpo arrives. When I call the dispatcher to check why the bus is late, he says rush-hour traffic is the culprit. (It’s Ottawa, so rush hour is about four hours long.) When the driver gets there, she apologizes, and I say it’s no problem. The traffic doesn’t abate, though, and I’m stuck on the bus for more than an hour this time. But sometime after 10 a.m., I finally get home. Now I’m ready to start the workday. I’m late, and behind on my own deadlines, so I’ll have to work well into the evening to catch up.

(I feel bad for ragging on Para Transpo here. Although the service can be extremely frustrating to use, the people who work for it are generally kind and accommodating.)

 
So. Let’s count the cost, shall we? On my end, this interview took about six hours of my time including travel, from 4 a.m. to soon after 10 a.m., for a 15-minute radio spot (prep time and on-air time), and that’s only my time, not anyone else’s. Getting the interview together involved labour from me, the producer, my attendant, my attendant’s boyfriend, the radio show host, the crew, the Para Transpo call-centre agent, the Para Transpo dispatcher, and the drivers. It required coordinating my schedule with the studio’s schedule, with my attendant’s schedule, and with Para Transpo’s schedule, as well as getting the time away from my own job. I’m also not counting the time I spent on hold, the time coordinating everyone’s schedules, or the time that might be taken from other activities due to lower energy in the next few days. That could add anywhere from an hour or two to a full day of lost or redirected time.

And it’s important to note that I have deliberately described an interview in which everything went right. My attendant could accommodate my request for an earlier wake-up time, the studio could accommodate my request to move the interview later because of Para Transpo’s hours, Para Transpo could accommodate my trip request, and Para Transpo again accommodated me when I asked to move my return trip. I could successfully board and exit the bus, so no snow, mud or other obstacles prevented my wheelchair’s easy access. The interview panel did eventually air at something close to the scheduled time. Any one of these things could have fallen through — they’ve fallen through in the past.

 
I also haven’t accounted for the cost to my body and my energy, which would make itself known over the next several days. The loss of sleep and the expenditure of energy could cost me spoons and make my symptoms worse over the next several days. It could cause a flare of a chronic illness, and the costs from that could pile up. Or I could feel no difference at all — but I know I’ll need be careful about energy expenditure over the next few days.
None of this is meant to imply that doing media interviews is too hard for disabled people or that you should not ask us. We disabled people are the ones who know our limits best, and only we can decide what is a worthwhile use of our time.

 
What this scenario is meant to highlight is that journalists are not the only people who do labour when it comes to media appearances. You are asking more than you realize from all of your sources, and you probably have no idea how much support is needed to make the interviews go well. Not every disabled person will have my access needs, and some will have ones I don’t have. But there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that goes with being disabled — a level of work that would put even the most dedicated field producer to shame.

 
I have heard journalists speak of not wishing to accommodate people they assume don’t have paid employment or other commitments; they think some disabled sources simply don’t have very much to do, so their time doesn’t need to be respected. Sometimes, journalists frame getting disabled people on their shows as a favour to the disabled community. I’m here to tell you that you are the recipients, not the architects, of the favour — and that disabled sources are probably doing a lot of invisible labour just to make it work.

 
I have many advantages over other disabled sources in that I have an idea of the internal workings of newsrooms. I’m also not beholden to the strict care schedules of something like a long-term care home or a supportive-housing facility. I, personally, am more likely to go out of my way for a producer who really needs someone to speak about disability issues, because I not only care about this topic and want disability issues to be presented well, but also sympathize with someone who’s trying to find a source and needs someone right away. But that still means it sometimes takes me an extraordinary amount of effort, and that does not mean it is always possible. When a disabled source asks you to provide an accommodation — or when you can make the situation easier for the source — there is no legitimate journalistic reason for you not to do so.

All this to say, yes, I am very aware of how hard it is to change plans as journalist. I daresay I am more aware of it than many, if not most, journalists and so are many of the disabled sources with whom you will interact throughout your careers.

“But Sarah, COVID is over, so why should we make accommodations based on it? Everything is back to normal! People will be fine if we do interviews sick. :)”

Every word of that is incorrect.

“No, really, isn’t the pandemic over?”

Fine. Statistics will vary over time, but at time of writing (late August/early September 2024), Dr. Tara Moriarty, who runs the Canadian COVID Forecast, projected that as many as one in 21 Ontarians were currently infected with the virus. Her forecast, which relied on publicly available data, also showed that Canada had 1,000 deaths a week, with the number expected to climb. That’s deaths. Not cases.

Masking has been proven to be one of the most important tools when it comes to avoiding infection and spread. Despite this, some jurisdictions in the United States enacted mask bans, with some exceptions made for disabled and otherwise immunocompromised people.
Vaccination has been shown to protect against severe outcomes in acute cases (that’s assuming vaccines are available; as of early fall 2024, Canadians do not yet have access either to newly approved boosters or to the last of the vaccine that targeted the previous dominant variant). But it does not appreciably lower the risk of long COVID, which climbs with every subsequent infection. Long COVID is severely disabling, and there is no cure or consistent treatment.

 
More and more studies are coming out showing that COVID can cause long-term damage and that the likelihood it will do so has nothing to do with whether the acute phase presented as severe. People are more at risk of a heart attack or stroke for up to a year following infection. COVID can cause lasting changes to the immune system, the vascular system, the respiratory system and the brain. And immunity from infection doesn’t last very long — you can get an infection several times a year. While deaths have declined overall, they are higher than they’ve been in a long time, and as cases climb, so will deaths[2].

 
I can’t tell you what your own risk calculus should be (“cough” wear a respirator mask and clean the air though “cough”), but I can tell you that a lot of the fighting about masks and mitigation measures has really been about whether disabled people should have access to public space, and media representation is an important part of the public square. Do not be accomplices to the ableism involved in shutting people out of media representation.

“But the vulnerable should be the ones advocating for this. It has nothing to do with normal people like me!”

• A. Are you sure you’re one of the people who isn’t at risk for COVID-19 and other illnesses? Many people are surprised when they discover that the “comorbidities” that make someone “vulnerable” or “high-risk” include things they already have. Hint: one of them is “one or more previous COVID infections.”
• B. Advocating for this is precisely what I’m doing here.
• C. Whether or not you are “vulnerable” or “high-risk,” what is “normal”? Who is “us” and who is “othered” in this question? With over one-quarter of people in Canada self-identifying as disabled, disabled people are a large part of the community, the audience for journalism, and potential sources to interview in Canada.

“But if I allow an email interview, the answers won’t be as good!”

Maybe. I understand why we journos tend to think this. Every journalist who has ever dealt with a government communications branch, no matter which one, knows the pain of asking them questions, whether when looking for purely factual information or answers to address accountability. In these situations, we journalists ask for someone who can meet with us in person. “Absolutely not.” Okay, so can we talk to someone on the phone? Regardless, the actual answer will usually come via email, and we will need to send the actual questions via email as well. There’s very rarely an opportunity for an actual real-time exchange.

Then the communications office seems to become the personification of the “I can’t read suddenly, I don’t know” meme. Our questions have to go through a bunch of people, and by the time they come back to us, the answers are nearly incoherent, often not even answering the question we asked. When we follow up, we get crickets or perhaps an even-more-incoherent response days after our story has already been published.

 
It’s absolutely infuriating. I know. (And comms professionals reading this: I know you work very hard and this isn’t your fault. I see you. This is a cultural, institutional problem, not a personal one, and beyond the scope of this work. (I recommend Paul Wells’s brilliant essay “The End of Media” for an exploration of how we got here[3].)

It’s natural that we journalists get our backs up about email interviews. After all, we’ve been burned before! But let me gently suggest that there’s a difference between dealing with a government office being cagey about its policies and a disabled private citizen who finds written communication more accessible than oral communication. Be open to doing things over several sessions or using technology that may be unfamiliar to you, such as AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) or a captioned virtual meeting. There are many reasons these accommodations may be needed: your source might find speaking physically taxing, have brain fog that makes it hard to remember things in the moment, or have trouble processing verbal language. The source could have speech impediments, could be Deaf or deaf or hard of hearing and communicate better in written English than spoken English, or could find it less difficult to write about past trauma rather than discuss it in an oral interview, one which might even evoke past interview techniques and re-traumatize the source. Or an in-person interview could cause an energy crash that could affect a disabled source for days or weeks. The point is, you are hardly in a position to judge whether a request is legitimate, so in most cases, it’s best not to bother trying and just do what is asked of you.

Whatever the reason for a request for a different approach than you are used to, you’ll rarely get a worse interview by taking into account a source’s communication needs, preferences and style. Worry less about whether someone might be evading accountability by using alternative methods of communication, and worry more about what you might miss if you are stuck in the modes that you’re used to. Just because speaking in person is more comfortable for you doesn’t mean it’s going to get you better journalism. Take the lead from your source, and figure out the way that you and they communicate best together. This will add a richness to your story that would not be there otherwise, give you a better chance of a clear picture and help you build trust in disabled communities.

A small caveat: although there may be public officials with verbal processing difficulties or speech disabilities (and you should be willing to accommodate those communication needs too), a disabled person acting in their capacity as a government official should be subject to the same scrutiny as any other member of their government. The more resources and power someone has, the easier it will be for them to engage with the media. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t accommodate your disabled sources’ communication needs if they also happen to be officials, but that there is a difference between Source X the private citizen and Source X the cabinet minister. If you’re writing about Source X’s personal life, you can treat them as an individual person. If you’re writing about them in their roles as the federal cabinet minister, they are accountable for their ministry and probably have an infuriating comms staff of their own. Disability accommodations are not an excuse for public officials to avoid accountability.