Reframing Disability

00:00:00 CHRIS PIKE

We’re about to ask our speakers to tell us a bit more but first of all I wanted to just explain how I came to be involved in this programme. So I’m programme manager for Media Trust and I’ve always worked in the disability sector – and this is my first time working for a non-disability focussed charity, all be it in a disability focused role.

And I’m autistic. When I was a teenager I remember reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and it was the only book I ever found which had someone in it and behaved and made me recognise a little bit of myself in. Now that book wasn’t even written by somebody who had any expertise about autism, but it was the only thing that I had to use to get a sense of someone who looks like me and behaves like me.

And we are now living in a more diverse world, but there’s still so much further to go. When we see something of ourselves in others, particularly in those role models we see on TV, in radio, in newspapers, we get a sense of what we can achieve as well.

So this programme is really  important to me and I know it is very easy to dismiss this kind of work as just compliance or box ticking but I think this work is really, really important and really changes lives. I hope for those of you who have attending our training agree with me. I hope those journalists here agree with me and I’m really looking forward to sharing what we have achieved so far in this programme but more importantly what you’ve achieved.

So that’s my little bit over. So now I’m going to hand over to Sean who is going to introduce our guests.

00:01:52 SEAN DILLEY

I will. I just want to take a moment Chris to recognise that it’s been clear throughout this project that you have this personal commitment and you bring a different perspective. And that is what all of this is about – whether it is in the sphere of disability or other areas of representation such as BAME and gender. We all have different backgrounds and perspectives and if we do not listen to those perspectives in media then we do not reflect the audiences we exist to serve. And if we do not reflect the audiences we exist to serve then what is the point of any of us being here?

So for me, that’s my motivation. I am delighted to be involved in this work stream as one of the sponsors. I am a working journalist – and I’m going to scare myself now – 20 years. Undoubtedly, the BBC has been the best employer I’ve work for, and I would not be here without the News Development team and that’s be colleagues from Katie Lloyd’s team and beyond.

But I’m not in it for just my career, which would be great, but I’m in it to continue to make things smoother for those who come afterwards.

We talking largely about contributors today. So there’s the personal journey. We would like now to hear from the chief executive of the Media Trust, our partners for this project.

Now, she’s made disability a key priority of the work for the charity and to tell us more about that programme, it’s the very wonderful Su-Mei Thompson.

00:03:13 SU-MEI THOMPSON

Thank you so much Sean and I hope everyone can hear me. Chris, Sean, I didn’t realise actually that you were going to start us off with such personal accounts of why this work is so meaningful for you. I suppose one thing about Zoom is that you do end up seeing people much more fully in a way and I think in that spirit, I would just like to share that I am the mother of a 15-year-old daughter who had severe ADHD, anxiety and Tourette’s. And that has created a real personal motivation for me to invest in more, and learning more about how to create a more level playing field for people with learning disabilities and difficulties. I wish we’d had her diagnosed earlier. As a family we are still learning every day how to give her the encouragement and support to be her best self and to try and shield her from stigma and other people making fun of her when her ticks caused by her Tourette’s and her anxiety are at their most pronounced.

So that’s my personal – angle into all of this but back to Media Trust and to the programme. Thank you for joining us today to celebrate the end of Media Trust’s pilot programme to Reframe Disability in the News in partnership with the BBC.

For those of you who don’t know Media Trust, we work in partnership with the media and creative industries to give charities, under-represented communities and young people a stronger voice. But it’s not just a one-way street – through the connectivity that we help forge, we also help the media to be more responsible and representative of broader society.

Now the good news is that diversity and inclusion are much more on the agenda of media organisations. But given limited time and resources it can sometimes feel like the victims’ Olympics. And unfortunately, too often disability has been the Cinderella of the diversity agenda.

When it comes to news, despite the fact that 20% of the UK population has a disability and there are disabled people who are experts in every area of life you hardly ever see a disabled person being interviewed on the news and even then it’s usually if the programme or segment is about disability.

And this lack of representation means important stories risk going un-reported, talent going unrecognised and negative attitudes towards disability going unchallenged.

And that’s why at Media Trust, we decided we needed to do something bold to tackle the lack of disabled voices in the news and we were lucky to secure funding from DCMS and Nesta to support new initiatives that reimagine public interest news. It was part of the Future News Fund. Sorry I’m hearing an echo. Sean I don’t know if you can switch of your…

00:06:11 SEAN: It’s probably my thing. I’m so sorry.

00:06:14 SU-MEI:

That’s all right. So we got funding from the government as part of the Future News Fund. And the Future News Fund was created to support new initiatives that reimagined public interest news. We shared a similar mission to other projects funded by the Fund namely to break down barriers between the newsroom and audiences, bringing in diverse voices to tell their stories and share their views to make the news more reflective of society.

For our project, we were fortunate to find a dream media partner in the BBC and especially the BBC’s 50:50 project which had already successfully increased women’s voices across BBC news and current affairs programmes. 

Together with the BBC, we launched our pilot programme in January and the programme has many, many different parts to it. A key part was developing disability awareness training for newsrooms and journalists. And so far, we’ve trained over a dozen BBC reporters as part of the pilot programme.  I know a number of you have joined us today - welcome and thank you for taking time from your busy day jobs and deadlines to be here.

On the talent front, we’ve helped the BBC recruit 36 disabled potential expert contributors and we provided them with media training led by our wonderful master trainer Phil and the rest of the team at Hayes Collins. I know Phil you’re here somewhere.

A very large number of our experts are here today – welcome everyone, we’re very excited to have you here today and to be accompanying you on this next step of your journey towards appearing on the news.

Sadly because of Covid, both the BBC and also at Media Trust, we couldn’t go as far or as fast as we’d originally planned over the six month pilot. So we had originally planned to hold this event live at the BBC and I hope you would agree that this is better than nothing. And hopefully we can regroup in person one day soon.

At the Media Trust we definitely want to continue working with the BBC and thanks to the pilot, we have some great foundations and networks to build from.

We’ve already seen our thesis proven that to bring about greater diversity in the media you need interventions on both the demand and the supply side.  The plan was always to prove the model through the pilot with the BBC and to share learning and best practice with other broadcasters and news organisations.

We were thrilled to have Channel 4 as well as Ofcom as part of the Advisory Group for the programme.

To facilitate this best practice sharing, Media Trust is working with media experts and disability organisations on a set of guides targeting different stakeholder groups. We’ve got a guide for newsrooms and reporters on how to approach media interviews for disabled people. We’ll have a guide for employers on how to find and support disabled spokespeople from their organisations and we will have a guide for disabled experts on how to prep for media interviews and ask for reasonable adjustments. And we’re excited about sharing them more widely once they’re available and hopefully they will help to bring more systemic change in broadcast news.

All that remains is for me to say a big thank you on behalf of all of us at Media Trust to everyone who made this programme possible – obviously all of you, our programme participants. Also the BBC and particularly Nina. Nina it has been a privilege and pleasure to have the opportunity to work with you and get to know you. Thank you to Lara and the rest of the 50:50 team – thank you for being so wonderful and easy to work with. To the mighty Sean – thank you for all your insights and working with us to develop the journalist training.

Secondly, to Nesta especially Anna and Karmel for all your encouragement and support and for pushing us to be creative and innovative in the design and delivery of the programme in the face of the pandemic. There were times when we just wanted to give up but I’m very glad we didn’t.

Thirdly a big thank you to all our fantastic Advisory Group members who comprised leading disability organisations like Disability Rights UK, Scope and Time to Change, as well as Ofcom and the Disability Unit within the Cabinet Office. Thank you Deb from the Disability Unit for joining us today and also for saying a few words.

Finally a big thank you to Phil and the team from Hayes Collins for doing such a great job with the expert media training. Tom and Sachia from the law firm Ashurst who were so generous in providing us with pro bono legal advice especially around the data privacy considerations of collecting, storing and sharing with the BBC the personal data that we have.

So a big thank you really to everyone who has been involved. And with that I will be quiet and pass on. Back to Sean I think. Thank you so much.

00:11:22 SEAN

Su-Mei, thank you again. It’s really amazing to hear the warmth that comes out there. I’m going to apologise because you will my speak as I mute and unmute everybody.

Su-Mei it has been a total pleasure working with you and I look to a continued relationship moving forward.

Now, I’d like to turn to another truly wonderful person and that’s not just being polite – I tell you. My BBC colleague Nina Goswami – she is our Creative Diversity Lead for 50:50 and… sorry I’m going to try that again because that’s where my speech software conflicted with the one in my ears so I have to turn that off – I’m so sorry. Nina is our Creative Diversity Lead at 50:50 and BBC News and for the 50:50 Project as well. Now, she spearheaded – along with the 50:50 team – representation women onscreen and across the BBC. Yes by 2020 that needed to happen, but it happened with enormous success and we’re all very proud of that. She’s now working to do the same on the 50:50 Project in terms of ethnicity and disability. Nina.

00:12:22 NINA GOSWAMI

Thanks Sean. You always going to get it wrong for the BBC person – it’s always the way isn’t it? (Nina Laughs) No, no worries. And thank you so much – and Su-Mei thank you so much for the really kind words. I know I speak for everyone at the BBC, the 50:50 team and, of course, personally about how absolutely amazing it has been to work with you on Reframing Disability – and also with the rest of the Media team.

I also just want to say a special thanks to you Sean and Chris specifically for all you’ve done for this project. You’ve been the backbone of the pilot and without your passion and dedication  frankly we wouldn’t be here right now. So thank you so much.

Of course, I’d like to add my thanks to Nesta for funding the pilot. Again we wouldn’t be here without it. And also for some interesting experiences…I’m not sure if Jenny from Media Trust is on this call at the moment but I remember how – before lockdown – we were at one of the early events of Nesta. You know, I found out she had a very creative flair because we had to articulate our plan for this project using tissue paper and multi-coloured pipe cleaners… and I don’t I would have been able to do it without Jenny frankly.

But from papers and strings to the best of bases. What this project has given us is a real great foundation as we move into the next phase of the 50:50 Project… or as I should probably call it … 50:50 The Equality Project.

And we tweaked the name for a very simple reason… the 50:50 Project is all about increasing women’s representation but we as the 50:50 Equality Project are about increasing representation for all underrepresented groups including disability – and why we’re here today.

For those who are uninitiated in the 50:50 ways as it stands at the moment – as I mention it’s about increasing women’s representation. The way we do that is that we use data to effect change. So we have 600 teams across the BBC – all different bits of output – using 50:50, as well as media and communication partners – media and communication teams, in other partner organisations. We have 70 across 20 different countries at the moment.

And they’re all doing the same thing, which is counting the number of women on their on their content to reach 50% over a set period of time – and the other 50% their monitoring men and other gender diversity. So what we’re doing is we’re trying to use the data to inform our editorial decisions.

So, I don’t know, say it’s a daily programme, at the end of the day we’ll have a look at how we’ve done with our data monitoring. Ah well, that doesn’t feel like we perhaps nailed it this time, let’s see what it looks like over the month period. So we get to two weeks in a we’re at say 30% women – so what have we been doing? What do we need to do to change the dial to make sure we’re reaching that 50% representation? So that’s all about our storytelling and making sure that we are supporting our journalists in helping them on their journey for that.

And what we’ve seen with women’s representation is fantastic. As I say, all those teams are involved. And we have our challenge month where we see if they can reach 50% women in the month of March. Which was lockdown this time round. So we were a bit like oohhh is this going to work?

Two-thirds of out teams reached 50% women, which was 9 percentage points up on the previous year…We also saw that 32% more 25-34 year-old women age bracket were consuming more BBC online content than they previously were and that’s the result of women’s representation.

So why am I telling you about women… well, the reason is that we’ve learnt from our increasing of women’s representation and we want to translate that over to disability. We learnt, obviously, many different lessons from it. But two particular things that we took away and that we’ve used within Reframing Disability had been about – the fact that we need to change our mindset when we’re looking at storytelling. And how do we help enrich our storytelling with different diverse voices.

And the second point, is obviously, trying to find the right voices. How do we find those good quality voices that we’re all striving for?

So we took those lessons and as Su-Mei explained, through the Reframing Disability in News pilot – together - we’ve created disability awareness training, which Sean and Chris have been spearheading, which is for our journalists specifically.  So that is there to help inform them in their storytelling… We piloted it, it’s great and now we’re going to start rolling it out from Autumn time, which is going to be fantastic.

And Media Trust has fabulously found us a lot of you on this call today to be or expert contributors – and that’s feeding into the 50:50 contributors database as we speak. So hopefully, some of you will be getting calls from our journalists soon.

All of this is supporting the work we’re doing in terms of the disability monitoring part of the project. For that Lara from the 50:50 team, Mariam from Radio & Education are spearheading how we do the actual data monitoring itself. And this work was supposed to go to business as usual by now but, like with everything, COVID has put a slight dampener on that. So we’re going to be launching that officially in Autumn – and we do launch it in autumn, it won’t be without the support. And that’s what this Reframing Disability tool that’s being created from this pilot – those tools are going to be made available – not only to the BBC but to all our 50:50 organisations as well as the media and communication industry beyond that. So there’s loads going on at the moment.

I’m really confident that this is just the start of what we’re doing. We still have lots to do when it comes to women’s representation. We’re just started the ‘journey’ I suppose when it comes to disability representation and ethnicity – and beyond that, as I say, there’s so much to do. And I know that with Media Trust that this is stuff that we can do in the future.

Finally, just to echo Su-Mei again – to say a massive thanks for all of you here today – because none of this is possible without you. And I hope I’ve got across that 50:50 and Reframing Disability are both about collaboration, so we need you all to continue being there with us as we continue to try and strive for increased representation. Thank you very much.

00:19:35 SEAN

Thank you. I’m going to learn a lesson Nina from last time and turn off my speaker before I do my next bit. But I just wanted to say, you know, we are very grateful for all the work you’re doing – spearheading not just within the BBC, but working with our partners here to send a very, very strong message to the media industry as a whole. And it really does feel everybody that we are changing the narrative now. This isn’t just another project. This isn’t a ‘let’s look at statistics’ , this is about removing the barriers to make sure that more contributors with disabilities appear. So Nina thank you.

Next are the media regulator – if we’re ready for that. I hope everybody is being good. I would like to turn to the director of content media policy at the media regulator Ofcom. She going to tell us about the project we’ve made, why that’s important and what needs to happen next to better represent people with disabilities in the media. Vikki.

00:20:27 VIKKI COOK:

Sean thank you very much and thank you for the invite today. It’s great to be part of this crucial discussion and it us wonderful to think that this is not the end of something but the start of something incredibly important for the broadcast industry.

I’m Vikki Cook. I’m Ofcom’s Head of Diversity and Inclusion for the broadcast industry in the UK. A personal inject from me is that ahead of joining Ofcom in 2017 – I can just about beat you Sean – I spent just over 20 years working in newsrooms right across the UK, so it’s something very close to my heart.

I think it is fair to say that Ofcom has an incredibly voice in the diversity space. Not just mine. But I want to focus over the next four five minutes – I just want to focus on three principles.

So let’s start with our annual diversity report for the TV and radio industry – and while we do have (inaudible) on the basis of gender, ethnicity and, of course, disability we actually do so much more through our work. So in 2018 we asked broadcasters to make disability and area of focus, with targeted initiatives and long-term measures for recruitment and progression. We were supporting CDN in their initiative which has been affected by COVID. But our reports focus on those behind the camera and microphones. We’ve always had a very clear: “know your workforce message”.

So last year more than 70 broadcasters featured in our TV report but of those only 29% provided a full breakdown on the disability data of their employees. And of those who did report it’s stayed pretty static year on year of around 6% - which is still way off the market average of 18%.

So we called on the TV industry to do three things: consult with their employees who self-define as disabled and find ways to improve the rates to get that more inclusive culture – to adopt positive action measures to retain and recruiting brilliant disabled talent and also to monitor outcomes from the doubling disability 2020 pledge.

We will continue to hold broadcasters to account. We’ve seen major improvements in just three years but when it comes to that crucial area of retention and succession and progression of key talent I think there’s a long way to go. And why Reframing Disability has such an important place.

I think that I wanted to get across in the second area that I wanted to touch on is the vast stream with have around accessibility work with the broadcast industry, which often goes under the radar. Ofcom’s commitment in this areas goes to those in front of the screen as well as behind it. We have statutory duties to make sure broadcasters to make sure that content is access to people with sight and/or hearing impairments. And we always say there’s no use have great accessible TV programmes if no-one can get to them so we have recently reviewed our code of practice around EPGs to introduce features like text to speech functionality again for people with sight impairments.

We’ve recently also pushed for equivalent requirements to be put in place for providers of catch up and on-demand services, which as you know are becoming increasingly popular. And I think what is brilliant it that Ofcom is in a unique position to encourage all parties in the chain from content to consumer and everywhere in between to think about the range of audiences that they’re serving and to think about the people that are making that brilliant content today.

And I think finally, I just want to talk about Ofcom – and how we, as the independent regulator of this brilliantly creative industry – must hold ourselves to account with our own workforce. We are a disability confident employer, level two but we have absolute ambitions and a laser focus to work towards (inaudible). We ask them to fill in a monitoring form and use language that is approachable and informal as we explain why we’re sharing data and why it’s much more important to get a more inclusive culture.

We have substantially improved our data on disability but we’ve still got a lot more to do. Last autumn we launch a refreshed workplace adjustments policy to make it even easier for colleagues to request the adjustments they need so they can be their best at work.

Throughout this work, obviously, we’ve been working with our disability and well-being network which has been brilliant – as well as other consultants  and experts from many areas like the Business Disability Forum.

So I’m very conscious of time there’s a lot of people here with a lot to say today so I’m just going to wrap up.

I hope that gives you a flavour of how committed Ofcom is to driving greater diversity and inclusion across the industry. COVID musn’t throw us off course and we’re working hard with broadcasters to ensure that initiatives stay firmly in the spotlight and for diversity to remain business critical and not revert to that awful place of a nice to have as broadcasters try to get back on their feet as lockdown eases.

So I shall pause there but say thank you very much for listening. And thank you again to the Media Trust.

00:27:09 SEAN DILLEY:

Thank you Vikki. You absolutely need to hold us to account. It is about those behind the camera positions as well. So for someone who is blind or very low vision probably might not have subtitles that were not audibly spoken – so that’s a good example. Hold us to account please. But off the back of Ofcom, the media regulator, I’d like to know what the Government think about this. Let’s see how the Cabinet office’s Disability Unit has to say on this – and the Government do have a vision for the future. Let’s hear about that now, from the Disability Unit’s Deputy Head Deborah Lonnon.

00:27:44 DEBORAH LONNON:

Hello and thank you so much for that welcome. And thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today. I’m really really pleased to be here and to talk to you a little bit more about what is happening in government on disability. So we are the Cabinet Office Disability Unit and we work across Whitehall, as an umbrella across government departments to ensure that disability is at the heart of policy making and hopefully to influence and help government departments think about disability in the framing of policies that don’t just say disability on the tin but have impact on disable people at a lower level than that.

We are currently picking up work on the national strategy for disabled people. This is a key manifesto commitment of the government to create an ambition national strategy that elicits real change for disabled people in this country. And it is a very broad approach that looks across every single aspect of government, every single aspect of national government – but also looks as cross-cutting areas as well. I’ll come on to that as I explain this.

We, we, we had kind of paused on the strategy while we were dealing with pandemic. We are still looking at the pandemic but we are starting to pick up the strategy again. So we have gone out to every government department and asked them to establish their baseline on what they are working on on disability at the moment, and we’re compiling an evidence base on that. We are looking to improve the data that we hold on disability – data and evidence. So there are some various research pieces going on as well. And a better understanding for the collection of data for disability that helps up form a baseline.

We are then going back out to government departments at the moment to look at ambition for disability. So we’re asking people to explore what they can offer disability within their departmental parameters but we’re also looking at cross-cutting areas. For example, transitions into adulthood could combine department of education and the department of work and pensions, business innovation and skills – areas where departments can work together to elicit real change for disabled people.

We have a wide-ranging and pan-disability approach. We don’t see disability as something that is apparent to people. We also celebrate and embrace invisible or hidden disability as well. And we look to be very broad and ambitious in our approach.

So, in starting to think about national strategy, we identified five strands of work that we thought would be helpful in informing what the national strategy should look like. Those areas are:

Built environment and transport – there’s a  lot of work already being done in the department for transport on accessible transport.

Independent living, which broadly covers anything you might think that Work & Pensions might deal with. So it covers disability benefits and financial support. It also covers access to work – work place adjustments, trying to close the disability pay gap.

Access to justice.

Products and services, which sounds pretty broad – but is anything that you might think that could make life easier (inaudible) It could include assistive technology, access to financial services etc.

The one that’s probably most important in framing this conversation is tacking stigma and perceptions of disabled people. Again that’s very, very broad but it is challenging the perceptions of disability within society at the moment and helping people get a better understanding of disability and the wide, wide range of value of people with disabilities in society.

Part of our work on that is working with Policy Lab of some ethnographic film studies. So we follow ten people through video diaries of their day to day lived experience of disability.

We want to put live experience at the front of our policy development work and listen strongly to disabled people in their organisation, so that brings us into the stakeholder work that we are doing. We work with disability charities, disabled people-led organisations.

We are at the moment developing better tools of communications so that we can reach out and use things such as citizens’ space to gain views from people who might not be represented by organisations.

I’m going to speed up a little bit and/or summarise because I am aware that time is curtailed a little. We are very interested in views from people. I was tent this in that the national strategy attempts to be ambitious, bold but also to fundamentally change British society for disabled people. That is our everyday job with just about everybody on this call to a degree.

It is reframing disability, increasing participation and opportunity for disabled people but also nibbling at the edges of perception as well and ensuring that disabled people’s value in understood.

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