Framing

If you’re reading this, you’re probably a journalist or another media professional of some kind, one who recognizes the need for better disability representation in media. You probably think certain groups are under-covered or not presented in a respectful way, and you’re seeking tips on doing better.

You’ve come to the right place. But as with any journalistic project, we have to begin by laying some groundwork. Before we write disability stories, we should figure out what we mean by a “disability story” in the first place.

One of the primary aims of this guide is to teach media professionals what it means to report through a disability lens. This is something that will make all stories, not just ones about a visibly disabled person or a disability policy, better.

Reporting through a disability lens doesn’t mean making every story about disability or shoehorning in disability where it doesn’t belong. It means recognizing that all stories, even ones that don’t initially seem to be about disability, can be improved by considering disability.

When we are reporting through a disability lens and are out looking for story ideas, we might ask questions like:

• For whom is the physical environment I’m moving through designed? Who might have more difficulty moving through it?
• Who benefits from this proposed policy or law— or does not benefit? Who could be harmed?
• How might this proposed policy interact with other policies at different levels of government or in different jurisdictions?
• Could there be unintended consequences of the policy or action? Who or what might not have been considered?
• When I think of my audience, who do I presume is included — and not included?
• When a public figure says “we,” whom do they mean? Who is, explicitly or implicitly, framed as not part of “us”?
• If there seems to be an obvious solution to a problem, yet it has not been implemented, why not?
• If a source is telling me something that I find upsetting or not credible, is my immediate response to assume that the source must be wrong or untruthful, or must have misinterpreted the situation, and it must not be as bad as they say?
• Do I assume that draconian policies must have exceptions, and that, if a source has not received an exception, they either haven’t engaged in the process correctly or don’t meet criteria?
• Whom do I consider credible and trustworthy? Whom do I consider to be an expert? And why?
• Where do I presume benevolence and competence? Where do I presume the opposite? And why?
• In what ways am I imposing my own narrative or the format of my publication on the story? In what ways might I be shaping the story without realizing it?

I’m imagining several possible responses to this. One is: But don’t we ask questions like this for every story? Of course! But reporting through a disability lens means applying the same skepticism and rigour to ourselves and our own prior assumptions and processes as to interviewing sources. It means looking at the stories we’re not reporting as much as the ones we are and asking ourselves what we might not have considered or what we take for granted. It means looking at our default assumptions: Who is a hero, helper, victim, or villain — and why?

There has been some progress in considering disability as a beat worth reporting on, which is a good thing. Disability stories are seen as newsworthy, at least in specific circumstances and with specific framing. But the newsroom still appears to see disability as a niche subject or as a consideration that can be talked about after the “main constituency” of a story has been addressed. If you have read a story on disability, you will likely have seen the following phrase, usually in the context of a law or policy proposal:

But disability advocates have expressed concerns [1].

 
These concerns are often framed as applying only to a few or to a special-interest group. In Canada, we’ve recently seen stories like this about COVID-19, physician-assisted death, air travel, and the federal ban on single-use plastics, among other topics.

This kind of “but disability advocates …” story does have a place. But I’d argue that it’s not enough. Almost every story, and pretty much every subject, has a disability angle if you know where to look for it. Any story about long-term care is a disability story: as Gabrielle Peters has pointed out, the population in long-term care is there because they’re disabled [2]. Every story about education also has disability angles. Same with health care, politics, and even sports and arts and culture. You just need to learn where to look for them — or where you’re not looking.