How Can Newsrooms Support Disabled Journalists?
On the campaign trail in 2015, Donald Trump infamously mocked a disabled journalist to little-to-no consequence. Many people expressed their disbelief that the incident wasn’t the end of his campaign. But the truth of the matter is, disabled people face such an uphill battle to simply claim their spot in American society that no disabled person was all that surprised that Trump’s tasteless impersonation made very little of a dent.
Disability is not included in research data for most newsrooms. That means most disabilities become de-facto invisible as newsrooms develop, and disabled journalists, except for notable ones, are being left behind both thoughtfully and practically. Canadian journalist Bailey Martins wrote about how she wasn’t even able to enter the building of the news organization she was working for because it was inaccessible for people with disabilities. It is a major problem when an organization that prides itself on bringing unfettered truth cannot even allow every participating member to do its job properly.
How do newsrooms fix this mess? There are ways.
INCLUDE DISABILITY ON EMPLOYEE SURVEYS
The most basic step to dealing with an issue is acknowledging there is an issue. Without giving employees the chance to self-report as disabled, a newsroom sets itself up for one outcome and one outcome only: discrimination. Allowing people to self-report as disabled also opens the door for community and communication between those journalists. Disabledwriters.com is one such nexus, but it is incomplete and disparate.
ACCOMMODATE WITHOUT QUESTION
COVID-19 proved to most people that workplaces are flexible when they want to be. Therefore, attempts to be inflexible or not accommodate people with disabilities will be clocked by all employees, and your organization marked as untrustworthy. Staff feedback around how flexible they need their workplace to be will be essential going forward regardless of staff population if any industry wants to keep its employees. For disabled employees, this importance will triple. There is truly no excuse in a post-COVID-19 world to not offer flexible working options and all employees are savvy to that.
REMOVE RED TAPE
Sometimes, the process to receive an accommodation for something, even something reasonable, can be arduous due to the amount of steps and people it has to go through to be approved.
Accommodation requests must be simple, must be easy to access, and must be easy to complete.
Accommodations are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act, but most workplaces deprioritize them, making workers with disabilities feel unimportant or unable to complete basic tasks. Any newsroom looking to improve their employees’ quality of life should make any and all such accommodation requests more accessible and easier to complete.
DOCUMENT FEEDBACK
Newsrooms actually interested in making clear, swift changes to encourage journalists with disabilities should consider documenting every request and piece of feedback that they receive from self-identifying disabled journalists. This feedback should be regularly assessed and applied to ongoing programs and services to make sure they are still serving the journalists, and aren’t merely fulfilling an optic role or some other placeholder. Being open about feedback also fosters connections between the journalists working to improve the space and invites collaboration between the newsroom and the journalists themselves at most every step.
Until wider attention is paid to journalists with disabilities, most newsrooms are missing even basic steps to really allow the disabled experience in the door. In that, newsrooms do themselves a disservice. If the objective of journalism is truth, how can truth ever truly be achieved when one entire experience is missing?
