Disabled journalists don't get jobs

A membership survey of the NUJ journalists' union has found that a third (31%) of its disabled members are long-term unemployed.

Stephen Brookes, chair of the NUJ Disabled Members' Council (DMC), said the survey had uncovered "a serious problem which shows that the lack of disability representation and journalism in newsrooms will do little to improve society's understanding of disability."

The survey - which attracted responses from almost a third of the union's 35,000 members, including 400 with disabilities - also found that 4.1% of disabled journalists had experienced discrimination in the workplace, while 8.4% had faced problems with access to job opportunities.

One respondent said that, when it comes to recruiting staff, "'the best person for the job' is a loaded term. It could mean 'who fits in' or 'who doesn't create problems', and clearly disabled people are seen as creating problems."

More than half (56%) of non-disabled journalists felt that disability and disabled people are not fairly represented in the media - and the figure leapt to 87% among disabled journalists.

As far as Brookes is concerned, the support of non-disabled members of the union "is essential in ensuring that disabled people do not continue to be the invisible group in the media industry".

He is urging all media organisations to "urgently re-evaluate their disability equality policies" in the light of the survey, which showed "the sad truth of employer-created discrimination facing disabled people in all areas of employment in the UK."