Episode 9

February 04, 2023

00:15:30

Disability representation in journalism w/ Grant Logan

Hosted by

Anica Zeyen
Disability representation in journalism w/ Grant Logan
Accessibility & Me
Disability representation in journalism w/ Grant Logan

Feb 04 2023 | 00:15:30

/

Show Notes

OUr guest is Grant Logan, founder of Ability today. Grant talks to us about representation of disabiltiy in journalism and what needs to change. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hello, and welcome to today's episode of Accessibility and Me. I'm Ze from Royal Holloway University of London, and I co-host this podcast with Wa Brunai from IB Business School in Canada, and Luke Kauflin, also from Royal Holloway. Speaker 2 00:00:21 Our guest today is Grant Logan, entrepreneur and founder of Ability Today, an online news and information service aiming to help and support the disabled community. He recently founded the Academy of Disabled Journalists, which helps disabled people gain foundation qualifications in journalism. Speaker 3 00:00:37 Grant, thanks very much for joining us today. Could you first talk about your work with Ability Today and what led you to set up the Academy for Disabled Journalists? Speaker 4 00:00:46 Sure. Okay. Uh, so I became disabled myself, uh, about 18 years ago. Had a road accident, uh, woke up in hospital couple of days later to learn that I'd broken my back, um, paralyzed from chest down. Um, but you know, that, to be honest, is a whole lifetime ago now. My life was kind of split into two halves. It's before the accident, after the accident. But, you know, I went on to do different disability projects. Um, and in about 2014, um, I realized that the disabled community, disabled people were not getting all the news that perhaps, uh, some of the smaller organizations were struggling to get their news out to the community. So I set up, um, disability today. At that point, it was just me and a computer, um, pushing news and information on events and products, research, et cetera, out to, uh, my community. Speaker 4 00:01:42 Um, in 2017, we launched as a social enterprise not-for-profit, and I started getting a team of volunteers coming into the office to help me run the website. 2019, it felt like the right time to do a rebrand, and we changed our name to Ability today purely because it felt, it felt like a really positive moment to say, look, let's focus on what we can do, not what we can't as a disabled, uh, person and community. Then we, you know, I, over the years I've been very fortunate to do lots of things from my wheelchair. I've climbed Ben Nevis with Capability Scotland. I've been rally driving, quad biking, flying gliding. Every time there's been an opportunity to go and do some kind of activity, whether it's ABS sailing or something, I've, you know, put my hand up and said, yep, I'll get involved in that. And actually, one of the reasons w disability came about was because I kept hearing from other disabled people on returning from these events. Speaker 4 00:02:45 Oh, I wish I'd known about that. And that was really the catalyst that w that put me on the road with disability today. So in about 2018 19, we started, um, we would get, we had a team of volunteers coming into the office. All were varying disabilities of the room and, you know, generally to help me with administration and to help me with, uh, the running of the website. And, you know, I turned 50 last year, so I don't feel the need so much to be jumping in racing cars and, uh, doing all of those kind of adrenaline sports. And I suddenly realized that I had a team of volunteers here. You know, we had people with learning disabilities, we had people with cerebral palsy from strokes, paralysis, um, you know, a broad spectrum of people with varying, um, ability and disability. And I suddenly realized that I could send them out to, to cover the world, um, you know, from a disabled perspective. Speaker 4 00:03:45 So we would send Steph down to the Disabled Water Skiing Association, or we would send Heather to go try scuba diving, you know, from her wheelchair, um, with a scuba trust, or simply Khalil with his electric wheelchair and a support worker going up to London, um, on the train to see how he gets through the barriers. How does he get on the train, you know, how does he, um, get on and off the buses once he's in London? And we created video content to really show people what is still possible and, you know, to inspire people to perhaps be able to, uh, get out and about a bit more than they thought they were able to. And we've created quite a lot of videos over that time. The next step was to get them a qualification. So we'd, we'd created a roving reporter program, and we had a team of four or five volunteers going out and reporting on the world around them. Um, and that's at that point I got in touch with the N C T J, the National Council for the Training of Journalists and said, I have this group of talented individuals, they all have disabilities and they're all reporting and creating online content and stories. We'd really like to look at what we can do to provide them with a qualification. I think they were, they were in my office within 48 hours. And, you know, that was really the start of the journey of the Academy for Disabled Journalists. Speaker 3 00:05:16 So we know disabled people are underrepresented in the field of journalism. What are the consequences of Speaker 4 00:05:22 That? They're very, very much kind of forgotten, is the easiest way to describe it. Um, it's getting so much better pl you know, I, I am a, you know, cup half full type of person. Um, I think we are in such a better position than we were five years ago, 10 years ago. Um, but you know, 20% of the population consider themselves to have a disability. 10 to 15% of those have a severe disability. But you know, that those, that 20% is not represented in the media. You know, we need to get to a position where, you know, a news station or a newspaper are approaching disabled people for comment on everyday life. It doesn't always have to be, you know, about a disability related story. So we have to get someone disabled to comment. You know, as I say, we are moving forward in a great way. Speaker 4 00:06:19 We now have some fantastic presenters on tv, AIA Depa, you know, Sophie Morgan. We've got Frank Gardner at the B B C, um, Alex Brooker on Channel four. We've got some fantastic people that are now, you know, making real strides in, um, making disability much more than normal when people see it on tv, and it's not just, oh, you know, they're presenting the Paralympics, you know, um, but there's still so much, you know, further we can go, we need representation behind the cameras as well in the newsrooms, whether that's in production, whether it's in editing, whether it's, um, data journalism. You know, there are some great new areas of journalism now that it's not all about being on, you know, the presenter at News at 10, or, you know, being a roving reporter out with a camera. You know, there's so many jobs that are back in the newsroom that could be, you know, filled by people with disabilities. Um, and we are getting there, but it's, it's a very slow journey. Speaker 3 00:07:28 Did you have any thoughts about how disabled people were covered by the mainstream press during the Covid 19 pandemic? Speaker 4 00:07:35 Very badly. I would say, to be honest, I think, um, like many kind of minority groups, they were forgotten about mostly, or it was very negative. Um, you know, the stories coming out about people with learning disabilities, um, you know, with do not r resuscitate notices, you know, or, you know, I've got students that had lost all their care packages. Um, they had, they were having to rely on family. They were getting no social care support. It was really, you know, things like doctor's appointments, being able to get a doctor's appoint or routine hospital appointments being canceled. You know, personally, I, I go to my spinal unit at my hospital on average two or three times a year to have scans and consultations and to make sure that my bladders functioning properly. And, you know, all the kind of things that actually people, people see you in a wheelchair and they don't really understand what goes on behind the scenes rather than, oh, the guys in a wheelchair can't walk. Um, all of those kind of hospital procedures were canceled and look, same with so many, you know, there's lots of cancer patients that, uh, obviously didn't receive treatment. You know, it's, that was across the board. But I think people with disabilities were very much pushed to the side we've forgotten about. And, um, you know, on a personal level, even just, you know, not being able to go out and meet people and communicate and have, you know, face-to-face contact with people. Speaker 3 00:09:20 Where were you at the start of the pandemic in March, 2020, and how did life change? Speaker 4 00:09:26 So March, 2020, I think was exactly the time that we were about to launch the Academy for Disabled Journalists. We, and actually like everyone else in the country and everyone else in the world, everything stopped. Everyone thought that that was it over. But for us, actually the academy, we Covid actually presented us with an opportunity. Originally our academy was going to be based here in my office in Sury. We were originally looking for o for the first year, only five or six students to come from a five or 10 mile radius of my office to come and learn face-to-face with a teacher from the N C T J who would travel by train once or twice a week to do face-to-face with students. Then, um, then obviously the pandemic hit and like everyone else, we realized that we had to move online. But for us, that was a massive opportunity because suddenly we were able to br uh, widen our network of potential students. Speaker 4 00:10:29 And, uh, in the first year we had students in Scotland, two students in Scotland. We had student in Manchester, in London, in Norfolk, in the southwest of England. So we were able to support, you know, even more students from an even wider demographic. Last year we even had a student in the Philippines in Kenya and Romania as well, you know, and all across the uk. So going online for us was a massive positive effect. You know, it's obviously been detrimental in lots of other ways, you know, for Covid for the last two years. You know, I think everyone's mental health has suffered to a certain extent with being isolated and stuck at home. Um, you know, on a personal level, my father became very ill and he lives in France and I couldn't go and see him. And I was only allowed to see him by luck, really. Speaker 4 00:11:25 And I got to see him 24 hours before he passed away. That's just one story in hundreds of thousands of stories like that where people couldn't visit their elderly relatives in care homes and, you know, people were isolated like that. So, um, yeah, it'd been hugely negative in most respects, but actually for us, COVID gave us an opportunity and, um, and yeah, and you know, as one of our students actually qualified what we are doing, she said, often my body doesn't allow me to leave the house, but there's nothing wrong with my mind. And that again, so we, by taking the Academy online, we allow people to stay at home and learn rather than asking them to come to my office, you know, and it's opened up a whole new, uh, opportunity for many people Speaker 3 00:12:16 In the field of journalism. There's been some limited progress on gender and ethnic representation over the past decade. Do you see a similar breakthrough for disabled representation? Um, what more can news organizations and media organizations do? Speaker 4 00:12:32 Well, I think, as I said, we are definitely heading in the right, uh, right direction. We've got some faces on television that are now becoming more mainstream. Um, and it, you know, we're not just seeing disabled people presenting the Paralympics, but we need more and more and more people to, to do this. And that's one of the reasons I set up the Academy for Disabled Journalists. You know, we want to train the talent of today for the jobs of tomorrow. Um, you know, it's fantastic. We're now being signed, posted by organizations like the B B C. And we are now becoming, you know, we're a partner with the national council, with the training of journalists. We've got some funding from the National Lottery, and we are going into our third year of the academy. So currently we have over 40 students studying journalism, and we're about to add another 20 or so to that. Speaker 4 00:13:28 And I want to be, you know, I wanna be at the forefront of those disabled students finding jobs within the industry. You know, we are at a stage now where corporations, organizations, they do want to tick that inclusion and diversity box, but we need to make sure that they're not just ticking it, they're actually fulfilling, you know, the requirements. And they're making sure that if they take someone on that, um, they are making sure that person has the right support that that person has, um, access to required transport access to the required equipment, whether that's software, hardware, um, I mean, we even had one example. Um, I think, you know, most people are, are, um, kind of open to the thought of someone with a visual impairment, might have a guide dog with them, um, but actually someone with a disability might need a support worker with them. Speaker 4 00:14:28 And we had an example of that fairly recently where, uh, we were setting up a work experience placement for one of our students. And, you know, I just happened to say, and yes, his support worker will be accompanying him, uh, every day to the office. Oh, uh, right. And it wasn't that they couldn't facilitate it, it was that they had to go away and think about it and work out how that they would do it. It, you know, um, so we're, we're, it's shifting goalposts as well and making everyone aware of the, kind of the new ways of working and, and how we need to support people moving forward. Speaker 3 00:15:02 Absolutely. Grant, it sounds like a fantastic initiative and all the best with it in future. Thanks very much for joining us today. Speaker 4 00:15:09 No problem. Thank you. Speaker 1 00:15:15 Thank you very much for listening to today's episode of Accessibility in Me. We hope you enjoyed it, and we'll tune in to our next episode. We would like to thank the British Academy for funding today's episode.

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