When We May Cause More Harm Than Good: How Journalists Should Cover Disability
By Jesse Berlin
Journalists often interview people whom they can’t relate to. They haven’t seen the things they’ve seen, experienced what they’ve gone through. Because of this, it might be easy for journalists to rush to conclusions, fill in gaps with their own biases, misrepresent the sources and leave out or misinterpret details. While this can be unintentional, we run the risk of warping peoples’ perceptions through inaccurate media portrayals, leading to harm and mistreatment towards communities who’ve entrusted us with the platform to have their voices heard.
“People with IDD [intellectual and developmental disabilities] deserve the same chance to define their own lives that everyone else gets,” said CEO of The Arc of the United States Katy Neas in an interview with the National Press Club Journalism Institute [1]. “Stereotypes in the media create stereotypes and barriers in real life. They shape expectations and how people get treated.”
It’s imperative journalists approach these conversations properly and consider how they’re presenting a story. Doing so can ensure sources feel safe and comfortable during any interaction with us and trust that we’re here to help and serve and not to harm and disrupt.
Being proactive, not reactive
“Start with one question: ‘What would make this interview work best for you?,’” said Neas. She encourages journalists to share the questions with sources beforehand or conduct the interview over email or text while asking the questions in plain language and letting the source set the pace of the conversation [1]. “[These steps] give people time to process and respond in the way they communicate best, and they help journalists capture what the person actually means.”
For any interview to go as smoothly as possible, both parties need to be on the same page. Have your questions be clear and easy for anyone to understand, Neas says, rephrase if they don’t and also ask for them to clarify what they mean if you don’t understand a response [1].
Journalists should also be aware of any accommodations that are needed such as wheelchair accessibility or a quiet environment if it’s requested [2]. A source may ask for someone to be with them and support them during the interview, in which case journalists should focus on the source and not the support person, even if they’re helping facilitate the conversation [1].
While taking these steps into account, journalists should avoid coming off as or being patronizing since Neas says people with intellectual and developmental disabilities on a regular basis “often deal with being talked down to” [1].
“Although someone has a disability, it doesn’t mean they are ‘courageous,’ ‘brave’ or ‘special,’” said the Endeavour Foundation in an article about how journalists can best understand intellectual disability. “It’s not unusual or unique for someone with disability to have talents, skills and abilities.” If the person you’re talking to is an adult, the article continues, don’t talk to them loudly or as if they’re children because this can come off as infantilizing someone [3].
You also shouldn’t say to someone that they’re suffering or portray them as such or that they’re disadvantaged because of and carrying on despite their disability status [3]. Having a disability doesn’t “automatically equate to suffering,” said the Endeavour Foundation, nor is it inherently a hindrance or something someone has to overcome. While it can be one part of someone’s life, it’s far from the only part and certainly doesn’t define who they are as a person.
This may mean journalists change the way they view disability, that it’s a societal issue rather than a medical one [4]. The medical narrative implies that the disability itself is what’s holding someone back and keeping them from being fully participating members of society when instead it’s the world around them [4].
“The harm of having a disability is produced by the way disabled people are treated,” said the Center for Disability Rights in an article with guidelines for how journalists should cover disability, “and the way society has been constructed with barriers that prevent their inclusion and participation.” While shifting from a medical narrative to a societal one doesn’t invalidate “often very complicated feelings people experience relating to their disability,” the article continues, it promotes inclusion rather than assimilation.
It’s best practice to only mention someone’s disability when it’s relevant to the story and to not have it define who they are as people [5]. Generally-speaking, using person-first language like “person with a disability” instead of identity-first like “disabled person” is a good rule of thumb as it implies the disability is something the person happens to have or has been diagnosed with rather than something that encompasses everything there is to know about them. However, since different people may have different ideas as to how they’d like to be identified, it’s even better to ask someone if they prefer person-first or identity-first language or another option [4].
Changing how we frame the story
Journalists should consider how they’re framing and presenting the story. What we publish are our own interpretations of what we’ve heard, learned and gathered. We may directly quote our sources, but we’re also paraphrasing and structuring all the information in a specific way to make a point or increase the impact.
If we don’t consider that the disability community is diverse with a wide variety of different perspectives and lived experiences, we risk having one specific story encompass entire populations, especially if that one story is the only one that journalists consider telling [5].
“Audiences start to see disability as a single category instead of a broad, normal, everyday human experience,” said Neas. She encourages newsrooms to broaden their disability representation to show that people with disabilities are “classmates, colleagues, parents, neighbors, and community members” [5].
Diverse representation applies to photographs as well. Similar to a journalist being patronizing during an interview, a photographer may, unintentionally or not, treat the person with a disability more like a prop than a human being as part of a pre-conceived narrative that’s been constructed without the source’s knowledge or input [5].
“Avoid images that turn disability into a symbol rather than a person,” said Neas, especially ones that infantilize or focus on pity [5]. “Look for images that show disabled people as full participants in real life … a student in class, a worker on the job, a family at the park.”
Photographers should focus on capturing natural, authentic images where a person with a disability is “on the same level as other models or actors in the environment,” says an article with guidelines for photographing disability by the People with Disability Australia (PWDA) [6]. Think about everyday activities that everyone engages in and common public and private settings where everyone can be in. Some people with disabilities also don’t “look like” they have one on the surface, in which case you should take their picture as you would anyone else’s.
The PWDA also says to avoid taking pictures of people with disabilities that portray them as needy, helpless victims or objects of pity [6]. It can make it look like, even if it’s unintentional, the subjects are less than people without a disability or who don’t have the same disability.
As with every source, informed consent is key. Getting permission from the source to take their picture is obvious, but photographers also need to be open and transparent about when and where the photographs will be posted, how they fit within the overall narrative and what they’ll be used for [7]. If a source says no, the photographer must honor that.
Re-writing the narrative
Journalists should focus on telling the right story and not the wrong one. A trend dubbed “inspiration porn” may look like it’s a positive, feel-good narrative on disability but in reality allows audience members without a disability to feel “warm and fuzzy” while the person with the disability is “nothing more than an object that produces these positive stories,” according the Center for Disability Rights [4].
“A good question to ask is whether this would be a story if the disability was removed, and if the answer is no, it really isn’t a story that should be told,” the article states [4].
The right story might be one that advocates for the rights of people with disabilities to live a safe, comfortable life in a world that can be inherently and unfairly biased towards people without one [4]. This can be because of a lack of accessibility in public and private spaces and the structural environment that prevents people with disabilities from enjoying these spaces as much as anyone else can [4].
“Inaccessibility severely limits equality, equitable treatment and inclusion,” the article from the Center for Disability Rights states. “A great place [for media outlets] to start is with challenging common ableist beliefs that can make life with a disability difficult.”
Focus on experiences, the article says, where people with disabilities are coming together to celebrate a sense of community, connect through shared experiences or fight for equal rights [4]. This will require journalists to put in the effort to talk directly to people with disabilities to get a firsthand account of their perspective and not rely on people without a disability, even if they’re advocates, to speak for them [4].
Ignorance isn’t an excuse for misrepresentation if we have the resources to learn. It matters if the difference between helping enact positive change and letting persistent issues go unresolved comes down to our work.
“If actual disabled people are not accurately portrayed in the media, the public will not understand disabled lives and experiences,” said the Center for Disability Rights. “This significantly impacts whether legislation is passed that is helpful to the disability community or not.”
At the end of the day, journalists are public servants and inform the world about communities that aren’t being listened to enough and broadcast the issues that are affecting their lives and the stories that have gone untold. The impact our work can have is sometimes downplayed, but we can be peoples’ only exposure to what’s going on, so it’s imperative that we deliver that one perspective the right way for the readers’ sake and for the sake of the sources. Otherwise, instead of helping enact positive change in peoples’ lives through raising awareness, we might perpetuate or increase harm towards people who provided us the story in the first place.
[1] Grant, H.B. (2026, May 6). A guide to interviewing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. National Press Club Journalism Institute. https://www.pressclubinstitute.org/2026/05/06/a-guide-to-interviewing-people-with-intellectual-and-developmental-disabilities/
[2] Haelle, T. (2017, October 10). Some do’s and don’ts when interviewing people with disabilities. Association of Health Care Journalists.
[3] n.a. (n.d.) A Journalist’s Guide to Intellectual Disability. Endeavour Foundation. https://www.endeavour.com.au/about-us/media/journalists-guide-to-disability
[4] n.a. (n.d.) Disability Writing & Journalism Guidelines. Center for Disability Rights. https://cdrnys.org/disability-writing-journalism-guidelines/
[5] n.a. (2026, April 7). Elevating disability coverage beyond visual cliches. National Press Club Journalism Institute. https://www.pressclubinstitute.org/2026/04/07/elevating-disability-coverage-beyond-visual-cliches/
[6] n.a. (2023, May 17) Guidelines: Images Portraying People with Disability. People with Disability Australia (PWDA). https://commonslibrary.org/guidelines-images-portraying-people-with-disability/
[7] Dodd, S. (n.d.) The Fundamentals of Photographic Consent. Photography Ethics Centre. https://www.photoethics.org/content/2022/2/3/the-fundamentals-of-photographic-consent
