Incorporating Disabled Voices Across News Coverage

3:00PM Aug 24, 2023

Speakers:

Keywords:

newsrooms

disability

people

great

disabled

talk

journalism

good

story

military veterans

work

grants

writing

journalists

accommodations

reporting

question

community

substance use disorder

mental health

Check one hey you talk to you. Okay, so records are going.

business wise I was gonna bring books down here, probably like two microphones.

You might expect there's so we can just Yeah, email the I'm going to log in this. I could have one way to do the effects of it. I can stand up here and then I'm reading the slides or whatever. And then that would be a feature.

I think it would be better for us. Right like once it gets started, like I'm just gonna come over and just drag this chair right right in front. of our whole presentation. You know what I mean? Like, like to make it more of like, okay, you know what I mean? Like,

yeah, what do you have? I just said

all three of it. You might not.

It was here people will be like, Oh, my fly by. Yeah. And if you did that, and you made a point about it was like, You're, it's there's more showmanship in it. Yes.

The other option is we believe, yeah, you can work the slides when it needs to center charity, but it's just

less of it. But Hello, if you're making a point here

for the disability journals Yeah. Oh, great. Yeah, come on in. No, I don't think we're not hiding anything yet.

But yeah, I think that that's that that Yeah. It's like, like principals are like yantrik ality like, if you're not doing it for like, really big.

Right, right. Yeah, right. Maybe even

I think it's, I think what do you think just like the raw emotion Yeah. Being presenting Yeah,

maybe even if we just kind of like start talking about like maybe if you start talking about because you know, gender best to us. You can start talking about it and I can be like, you know, just doesn't even feel right. And I can actually like get up while you're still talking about it and like you know, make a show of it. You know, maybe that I think that's good. I think that will be but I totally want to like just drag it there. And have it like centered Okay, right.

want the room to feel the missing presence as much as we do

I can take it from here though.

Things like I can I can. But I may just come sit Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, guys. Yeah. Okay, good. All right, then. Then that'll be okay. Can I know my only My only fear is if there's if the whole place is packed or something. We got 14 minutes to fill up all these chairs. If it does, then we'll then we'll adjust but I think it's nice to have you sitting next to us. Instead of the delight that we dislike.

I upgrade this nice, nice and painless

or is this my exported one? Yeah

I don't think we need to do that.

If you can keep Yeah, keep runners because the only problem is he didn't have internet.

Yeah, okay, so Oh, and this is open with Google Docs.

You try with Adobe Acrobat Pro.

Did you download an issue with but with Canva? No, no.

It's a PDF dot pdf. So it's gonna avoid Acrobat or whatever it is.

Go to your downloads folder or their file explorer. I know we hadn't. I hadn't really learned

companies or students. And where's that let's look for

File Explorer. If you right click on that on that start menu instead of left clicking directly on the file explorer, lower Whoa, yeah, there it is. Boom. And then the skills to my job that I honestly like it's such a point of contention because we switched from Max in the field, editing this practice. Do you have like 15 minutes at most a half an hour to edit a full two and a half minute package with tracks and whatever. And so it's like, every time I ever every time we ever do it, it always feels like oh my god. We pulled off a miracle. And then they took away all our max and without any training took us off Final Cut and moved us to premiere I actually teach premiere so I was pretty cool with it. But like it's still it's a way heavier program and you can't AirDrop stuff and so basically there's been like a revolt and people have like quit and other people and union guys never do this but like people bought their own gear to replace in the trucks that built that Dell. Now every time someone takes out a truck like they'll swap out just like a huge problem.

Mac versus PC. That's the truly unsolvable question.

Well, the thing about it is like when you are like like it's one thing when you're doing anything on computers, but like when you when every second counts on those edits. It does it breaking news. So like I was like, What are you doing? A file explorer? What the heck is that every

like? Yeah, like losing three seconds on every click and I'm like I'm so bad. And they'll just let me just

Yeah, so these all they all work. This is my favorite part.

I'm excited for the political. Yeah. I just finished her and I have spoken about that too.

Oh, and there's I didn't put it up there because the book cover isn't very interesting. But there is a book called the 18th day Vice President about Thomas Eagleton.

How far is the place where I get those who want to fit in? Oh, it's like the credit report. Okay, I'm just gonna check real quick.

I'll be here before we have 18 Day vice president and he you know, he randomly got selected by McGovern and then he they found out that he had been they didn't like check the gate. He was like the last choice like every other choice, like didn't work out or something. So they need some other random guy to fill in. And then they found out that he'd been institutionalized a couple times and then they wouldn't even it wasn't institutionalized wasn't one of one. He was hospitalized right

he was hospitalized for

like six days. And in he he did a press conference and he was like, Oh, I was I was experiencing like fatigue. And I was like burnt out or whatever. And that happened a couple times. It was depression. It was it was caused by that. But it wasn't even it wasn't when he wasn't anything.

He he lived around the corner from us. Really? Yeah. I see him at the grocery store all the time. Nice guy.

Yeah. And just like totally

normal. Like guy. Just got he just got kind of railroaded and like everyone in Missouri knew that too. We were like, Why are you doing this to this nice guy, like so wrong.

What's a great example of why people don't disclose,

right? Why would you?

What's better? It was a medical issue. Like I had been hospitalized for five days for like foot pain and when I wouldn't like go around like, on the campaign trail being like, whoa, we got an elephant in the room as I had foot pain. Yeah, 14 years ago,

14 years ago. Right. Like, people always ask me like, because I obviously can't hide it. Right there like do you get upset when people do like? No, do they get jobs like, feed yourself? Like you shouldn't you got to do what you got. To do.

It's not showing up in the system. Russell is answering

like to try and land it by like 1215 Yeah. And then that we have 15 minutes to

I started talking to.

You What time was that? 26. Russell's gonna run

they'll be funny for random crap, grabbed the chair

make some money. out of their chair. We have our backup.

Know it's okay I got through it

alright

want to make sure that we don't know that I can leave I'm not the Microsoft of all that was good.

Probably more room so you need to get my attention just in the hallway Thank you

So, questions ended up I just Oh great. Okay, so should we just keep an eye on? So let's see the answer. You're spending a big one bomb so you got more batteries in cases. When

you know when they're gonna come? It's full. How long does it take to come on once we switch it on? Oh, it's fine. We'll keep it after that. It's right. I'm an audio professional. And Nick. Thanks. Good. Thank you wants to take us out. doing that. Start Are you going to spare? You want to start?

Good morning. Ladies and gentlemen. And thank you for joining us for the ideas for covering disability panel. We are very happy to have you all here. Very excited to see the room filling up. Keep on coming in. Come on, you're in the right place. Very nice to meet you. All. And thank you for coming to this panel and for being willing to engage with us on these ideas about disability journalism, which is kind of treated as a niche topic, but maybe it shouldn't be and that's a bit of what we're here to talk about today. My name is Russell Midori, I'm the president of military veterans in journalism where we have a very strong focus on disability reporting because of the needs of our community. Because basically our our veterans came to us and spoke to us about the problems that they've seen in news. And so we wanted to learn more about it. And that was when we turn to Kara who I'll introduce you to now.

And I'm Kara reedy and I'm the director of the newly formed disabled Journalists Association. I started actually under Being comprehensive or detailed or kind of even. I don't know what the word is but not great, I guess is the two words not great around disability but also inside the newsrooms, disabled journalists aren't really treated that well. And so that's was our goal is to not only get journalism to the journalism industry to cover disability better, but also to treat the disabled journalists inside the newsrooms. Better.

And my name is Ryan fryer. I'm a journalist in residence at the Century Foundation, progressive think tank in Washington DC and I'm part of the disability economic justice collaborative, which is the first program of its kind in the US Think Tank, fully focused on disability policy and applying disability as a lens across the entire policy spectrum. And I came to this position after spending about six years writing for CNN I was, especially in the last couple of years during the COVID pandemic, I was covering health and science and was really chronicling this this larger trend of people becoming newly disabled by long COVID. And because my own experience with a post viral illness, dating back to being in high school with having a intermittent chronic illness, because magic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome, and we knew that there would be a significant number of new disabled people with COVID long haulers or long COVID who develop COVID and never get better and went on to write a book called the long haul, solving the puzzle the pandemics long haulers and how they're changing healthcare forever. And so for the last eight months, I've been trying to translate some of these ideas not just from journalism, but into policy and change changing laws and changing rules in Washington DC.

So, we'd be remissed we were supposed to be four of us. That our fourth was supposed to be Jen deer in water, who is a native disabled, a Two Spirit journalist. But accommodations were not able to be made for them to come over zoom. And so

we couldn't we couldn't even we just want to we want to leave a chair here for Jen because this represents the people who aren't able to speak today to our to our panel because of because really, the world isn't made for them and and we're fighting to change that. which is to improve the accommodations that are available to them.

So, here's the thing, something that I learned in the last month is that most accommodations cost $500 or less, most. And when you make that accommodation, the $500 Let's say you spend the $500. Usually it means that you've spent the $500. And so now the accommodation is available for everyone. It's not a repeated cost. So when you hear newsrooms talk about Well, that'll cost us money. How much money is it gonna cost that's like pizzas for your newsroom one day.

And, and also what value are you getting out of it? Right. As a news organization, we generally are aiming to seek the truth right? And so the idea that an accommodation for a disabled journalist is unavailable. Well, that accommodation is something that it gets you closer to the truth because of the role of diversity in news diversity is not just some token thing that is you know, that is like cool right now or something right? It's, it's actually helping us tell stories better. And if you don't have a person with experience, walking through life as a disabled person, in your newsroom, if they're

A Nice Day One in four. Disabled, a one in four people are disabled. What they really mean is one in four working age adults, we're not talking about children or elderly people, so the number is actually higher. So when you are when you are excluding an entire population out of your workforce, you are not actually getting to the root of the problem because there's no way that you can understand the disabled experience not fully unless you are disabled or you know, someone who's disabled and even if you know someone who's disabled, that doesn't actually mean you understand it fully. And so part of having diverse newsrooms, not only just racially and gender and all of these things, it creates more

Need allowances made for their interviews. And many people will want to do interviews over email or over text message because they're more comfortable communicating and writing rather than talking directly. So those are just a few of the accommodations that are necessary.

Yeah, I've kind of feel like it's, it's understanding that, that you have to be flexible. And if you are on a tight deadline, and you're writing about disability, maybe you go to your editor and say, This can't be on So, so the disability of the disabled identity is something that the disability community talks about a lot. Some people don't identify as disabled, but that doesn't mean that they're not disabled. Right? And there's always like there's now this conversation about whether you're a person with a disability, or you're a disabled person or so like I, I used to say that I was a person with dwarfism. Now I just say I'm a dwarf. Because that's my identity. Like that's how I move through the world. And people come to this, this idea of identity and disability in different ways at different times in their lives. And that depends and everybody makes choices based on who they are and what they want and just like I used to call myself a person with dwarfism, and now I've changed. Like, everything changes, and I feel like we all have a different perspective on that kind of,

I'll mentioned that in just in in my field of covering infectious disease that 30 years ago it was very common for their an HIV issues that the EU would say it was preferred to say a man or woman living with HIV, and now with with long COVID So a new pen, a new viral pandemic and a new sort of post viral identity that COVID long haulers have a issue where their their illness is seen as invisible or as contested or as there's not yet a biomarker that really describes that they truly have the condition so

Do have a higher once you get into the higher rate of disability your your income goes down so you disabled people more likely to live in poverty than any other Why don't we question that more often? Why don't we question that when Black? When you're black and disabled, you're more likely to live in poverty. Why don't we question those things? And that's, that's what we're trying to get like journalists to see is that when you see disability, it's not that oh, that just happened. Oh, well, whatever. No. Why? Because poverty, poverty not only creates disability, it also exacerbates it. So why aren't we talking about it more

and and by the way, as a as a newsroom leader, right? What a what a story to miss. And and as you're trying to as you're trying to connect with your audience and share what's going on in the world. I mean, you know, there's no system that you could investigate, you know, if you want to if you want to do do good investigative journalism, like start with start with the disabled because you can look at any system and the way that it treats disabled people is a really good measure of the effectiveness of that system. And so, you know, I mean, I live in I live in New York City where we we complain about the MTA all the time, right? But if you're disabled only one out of five stations has access for you. So if you if you are in a wheelchair and not only not only do you have the challenge of having to get around in a world that wasn't made for you, but now you've got to go an extra eight stops, and then and then backtrack or something to get by To navigate that on top of everything else, it just demonstrates the weaknesses of that system. And so here's a system that serves everybody and the people who it isn't serving are a stronger, microcosmic example of why it's wrong. And if you're an investigative journalist, if you're a newsroom that's trying to have a good beat that that really understands its audience, then it needs to be deeply engaged in the work of disabled journalism.

This is also my slide so I we talk about policing and mass incarceration and race a lot. Well, we don't talk about is how race and disability cross and what happens now. We were going to put a slide in about policing. So there's an estimate that has been floated around that 50% of the people that are shot and killed or just killed by police are disabled. We don't know that for a fact because of the way federal numbers are gathered and the way police don't have to report but that is an estimate. But what we do know as far as mass incarceration is that 24% of all prisoners participate in special education classes. 29% of federal prisoners are disabled 40% of state prisoners, and 13.7 federal prisoners have a cognitive disability, while 24% of state inmates have a cognitive disability and a cognitive disability is defined as having trouble remembering things. And so everybody's like, Oh, what's this? You know what this? This is institutionalization changed. So we used to lock disabled people up in facilities, hospitals, those kinds of things. Now we lock them up in prisons, and we don't talk enough about that. That there are disabled people being locked up mostly for just being disabled and poor. And when we talk about mass incarceration, we I never I rarely hear people talk about it. What they do say is they'll say, oh, this person has trouble reading. Uh huh. Right. How did that person get to prison? How Why? Why are cops Why is everyone targeting disabled people? And we know that they are. We know that. We hear all of these stories about a mom calls for their kid who's having a mental breakdown, and the cop arrives and just shoots up. We know that Sandra Bland had a disability. We know that. Freddie Gray had a disability like you go out look, Elijah McClain was autistic. Like you go down the line and you're like, oh, wait a minute. Like if you really think about it, think about all the big killings that we've heard about from cops disabled people.

So this is how it starts, though. It starts in schools. I used to work for a nonprofit that sues school districts for not providing accommodations to children, but also they were getting reports of disabled children as young as four being handcuffed for having a normal disability, whether it's AD D, or autism. So blacks, I like to do a comparison so black students account for 15.5% of all public schools serve students but are 39% of the students suspended from school. Disabled Students account for 12% of all public school students but were 20% more likely to be suspended. And then disabled black students account for 90% of all K through 12 disabled students, but are nearly 36% of students with disabilities suspended from school an over representation of 17%. Schools are targeting kids click there and we know that like my mom's a social worker, she's retired. She was working in schools from like the 70s on she was actually asked as a black social worker to shuffle all of the kids

education can be in your life and I know for me I didn't have access to education when I was young and I went into the military and through by virtue of my service I was able to get the GI Bill Do things that maybe would not be not be seen as not be beloved by the Marine Corps put it that way. And so so what happens is that that these people who get out that way they they not only are they dealing with the stigma of having of having this disservice that they really don't even want to talk about it's stapled to every job application they have for the rest of their life. And also they do not have access to the education that would change them. And by the way, we did this to them. We our society, we who also we who did not effectively question the reasons for going into war. Also we who benefited from their service and and who owe them something right like if you, you know, if you if you send people if you send people someplace and you break them, at least you ought to have some responsibility for making them whole again. And so. So this is something that that deeply affects the community that I serve at military veterans in journalism as well.

And so I'll mentioned here that I've been working on a big piece of the last few months about different presidents or senators who had disabilities and when you look through history, whether they're, you know, centering their disability or not, they're you know, Abraham Lincoln, perhaps our greatest president had in I was tempted to say suffered from but it shouldn't be working. They lived with lifelong disability of depression, and it wasn't necessarily that he did suffer from it, but he also gained power from it and a lot of his depth of feeling, his ability to write. And his ability to speak came from this, this kind of melancholic disposition. And a lot of what made him as great a President as he was was because he had depression and there's a similar story with FDR that is a great book about him called the man he became about how polio fueled his his rise to greatness and how polio actually was a major factor and probably why he became president in the first place because his his experience with illness with disability gave him a new lens on life. It forced him to become a new person and made him more empathetic and made him more aware of the experiences of other people. And Bob Dole is another really good example of somebody who live with a disability throughout his life and never became president, but he was a nominee for the Republican Party in 1996. And he was one of the foremost champions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and that came from his lifelong advocacy for disability rights came from his own experiences, being disabled himself from World War Two. And so that the ways in which it can go go down the list of a good number of other leaders who were disabled or who didn't necessarily make disability part of their like, identity, but who were actively channeling those experiences and became There's a really interesting book about him with called the 18 day running mate so he was appointed to be George McGovern's running me on the on the ticket, and it came out that he had been hospitalized multiple times for exhaustion related to depression. And he was taken off the ticket and not allowed to run in.

Yeah, he actually a neighbor of ours. Really great, great senator, great guy and just got railroaded because he had depression a couple times, you know, and the other thing is, you can look at cover coverage of Fetterman. It was awful. was awful. Can he do it? Should he be doing it? Shouldn't he be just napping? Why is he doing this now? He is not fit to serve like there was all this reporting about whether he was fit to serve. I'm sorry that there are a lot of senators that are senators now that are not fit to serve that no one questions but because he had a stroke and took some time to get better. We have to question every moment of his every decision he makes everything. disability is a is something that's going to happen to all of you. Right? If you're lucky, you're lucky enough to live you're lucky enough to live on law to be lived to be an old person, it's going to happen to all of you.

then and then people who have been mostly isolated from the sidelines and Jen Deering water who was would have been here today is one of those people who has chronic illness who were that makes it hard to travel. And that can manifest in a lot of different ways and most commonly you hear long COVID talked about similar to the myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome which is which is what I have that it has fatigue and brain fog. So brain fog means a cognitive dysfunction to make difficult to read the code to do basic problem solving, and make it making decisions and on the list of any kind of executive function that involves using your mind and while that the science is still emerging, it is very much a disability for the people who have who've had long COVID for like three plus years at this point. And we want to highlight somebody who's doing a really good job of reporting about this is my friend Ed Young at the Atlantic who's uh, who won the Pulitzer Prize for a lot of his coverage of COVID and a lot of the method that ad and I use in reporting about loan COVID is talking to the people themselves. The patients are the experts, the people with the lived experience, have either 10 times or maybe even 50 times more, more knowledge than medical doctors and I was reaching out to in the course of writing my book wanted to reach out to the people who were the most knowledgeable. Frequently, my interviews with doctors and scientists were among the most frustrating and the ones that were the most interesting than ever coming into it was just truly just trying to get get the facts get the information. The patients had the information and the doctors didn't. And so I developed a method of reporting around that. And it wasn't necessarily that I was trying to make a political statement by doing that, but have now become more political in this viewpoint that using the lived experience and using patients as experts, is actually one of the best ways to be doing your journalism. And I'll be continuing to write white more on that topic about how to how journalists can actually change their reporting because of this.

You can also like when you're talking about illness and you talk to a doctor it's okay to question a doctor. It's also okay to see if they're ableist because a lot of doctors are like, just because you're a doctor doesn't mean you are devoid of ableism sometimes it means you are more ableist

Yeah, and I included some of these articles here. And and now I've actually the reason that I included them is different than the reason that I want to talk about them now. But what military veterans in journalism did when we started digging into this issue is is we looked for solutions to identify ways that we could get more journalists to cover stories that were focused on disability. One of the things that we did is we created a speaker's bureau we did about a year of training ourselves, those members of military veterans in journalism who volunteered to serve on the speaker's bureau. And we went around to newsrooms around the country and provided that training to to journalists and to editors, and news directors. Another thing that we did is we created a grants program and this you know, my lawyers tell me not to say this, but it's kind of like bribery, right? And what we do is what we do is we create these grants, but it's for freelance journalists, freelance journalists who have a tough time. One problem that happens is that it's very tough to get a big newsroom to cover something. It's very tough to get, you know, boy trying to get booked on Good Morning America or something right, but even even smaller newsrooms and local and state places. There's a lot of competition for coverage. And there's a lot of sources that are already kind of embedded with those rooms and stuff, you know, but what we did is we looked at freelancers, and we said, well, freelancers have to do all this work to get a story pitch in, you know, submitted, and I know when I was a freelancer, I was like, man 40% of the work that I did on the story is before I even knew if I was getting paid for it, you know, and that's that's a really tough reality when you're dealing with how am I going to feed myself feed my kids can't take care of my family, pay my rent, whatever I have to do. How am I going to do all that? On a project where I'm pitching on spec, you know, so we did is we created a grant a grant that enables freelance journalists to come to military veterans in journalism, and to apply in a very simple process by the way, it's not like it's not like applying for a grant for it. Well, I won't name any four foundations that make it tough but because they are my friends, but applying for applying for grant, you know, we made it pretty simple, a Google form and we and then we would connect them and depending on their experience level, we might connect them with a mentor as well. But these grants paid people to do research and to do initial reporting on disability stories so that they could see if they even had a story that had legs, right. These are just three of the stories that came out of it. The first one published in the warhorse by Jennifer Barnhill last week is a fantastic story about how neuro divergence is discriminated against in military recruitment. And it also talks about how other countries do not just turn away people who have one day had an autism diagnosis at some point in their lives. Other countries actually utilize them for skills that they're that they're especially useful for national security. The kind of like the old Rain Man thing about like codebreaking is you know, is just a tip of the iceberg about the different ways that neurodivergent people can contribute to a mission. Right? And if you're in the military, in my experience, it's about mission accomplishment. And if you're excluding people who are better able to accomplish certain missions, just because they think differently or they look differently, then it actually harms our national security. It actually makes us less prepared to defend ourselves or project power in the world. Some of these other stories, they talk about the way that that systems are just kind of inherently stacked against people and I I don't want to go too deeply into it right now because I want to give time for question and answer. I just wanted to share what military veterans in journalism is doing and it's it's so so much thanks to the partners that we've worked with that have helped us to understand the value of disability reporting and from our community that that knows how important it is to them.

Yeah, and I can, what I'll do is I can come around with a microphone if people have questions and raise your hand and we'll get to as many as we can.

There we go. Got them already good. questions or thoughts or whatever, you know, this is just a fun space to talk about whatever.

My name is, Beth. I don't really have a question, I guess have thoughts. I'm not a journalist. But I, I'm autistic, and my dad would get and it's so hard to get people to care. Like as he you know, like I'll, I'm doing what I can on the back end trying to lift my voice and Autistics who are nonverbal or people of color, you know, like that are even more marginalized than I am. And no one really cares. So, so it's frustrating. So I'm just here to

We emailed hundreds and hundreds of newsrooms and not just like one time we had a really systematic process for emailing newsrooms to talk to them about disability journalism. And the number of responses that we got was really shameful. And I actually walked around and actually knocked on their doors and showed up newsrooms hate it when you when you when you show it when you door knock by though Hey, but but I did it on Veterans Day so they couldn't turn me away. And And not that I did not shame any individuals. But you know, I definitely saw how shame might be a useful tool. I don't know. I'm just I'm still hypothesizing about that. So I don't want to share that up. And we have more questions. Yes, go ahead.

Hi, I'm there you go. Hi, I'm Natasha. Let me and you know, that's helpful for you. I work in Canada but I will very gladly chat with you. And give you my card. So let's talk. I have been working I work for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. And a few months ago, we launched our first national Accessibility Plan. So both internal and external, across the corporation, and I've been working on that, and there's so much I could talk about, I want to chat with you afterwards as well. But to stay focused one thing I'm really curious about all your thoughts on the idea of mental health and disability. Because I think, especially within the industry, there's been a lot of conversation around the mental health of journalists, how to support wellbeing within the newsroom mental health initiatives. But interestingly, mental health isn't and I see you smiling nodding. Mental health isn't often discussed as a disability and I recognize sometimes it's a personal thing whether you identify that way or not. But I'm curious about your thoughts about maybe where you see that conversation going or where you'd like to see it go.

So I I believe that like depression and all of the conditions that fall under mental health are disability and the Americans with Disabilities Act actually covers all of those that so it is a disability, but we don't talk about it and we also don't talk about how newsrooms create harmful situations that harm people's mental health and that can trigger depression that can trigger PTSD that can trigger all of these mental health issues. And then we talk about well being instead like some weird insurance term, like oh, your well being well, the well being means that you have to change the environment, which means you have to make accommodations, which means people shouldn't be maybe working 18 hour days. It's be accommodations conversation is actually a lot broader than we talk about and it affects when you make a comp like I said in the beginning when you make an accommodation for one person and make it a rule than it helps the whole newsroom it changes how rooms exist that change how groups exist. And so until you bring in disability as a full conversation, mental health is never going to get better. It just isn't.

So I have a question about reporting on substance use disorder. How do you deal with newsroom leaders who view addiction or substance use disorder as like a fundamental problem in the credibility of the source or just generally like, view mental health, our mental illnesses as like moving them into the category of this person is inherently unreliable and untrustworthy? Do you have any advice for managing dynamics like that?

It's very difficult because if people are already in that space and ableist it's hard but one thing I do always throw out there is that all of these things are covered under the ADEA which means that in, in the law, these people are protected. So if in the law they're protected, then why wouldn't we speak to them? Right? What? I'm sorry, but any other source could be lying to you to and do like most politicians are lying like, so you're not going to talk to them, like I had, right? Like I had, like PR people all over like, a lot of people are gonna lie to you. Okay, so what because they're on drugs and may lie to you. You can't figure out if they're lying to you. Like that's part of the reporting process. That doesn't mean you justice counted. It means it's part of the story. And so I think I don't know what the answer is to changing people's minds, but I think it's having a discussion about it that my favorite thing is when someone says, Well, I think you might be biased and you shouldn't report on disability. I'm like, great thing. Get all of the white dudes out of the White House briefing room. Because Biden's a white guy, so they can't report on it. They're biased. And they look at me like Oh, yep.

I think there's another another solution there which is also I mean, look, part of part of the answer to everything on all these questions is really good journalism, right? Like, there's always like trust but verify still exists. And that's still a good principle and you can verify something to the extent that you can verify something and you can present that then that makes it great. Another thing we're doing, I think, is is familiarizing yourself with journalists who are doing the kind of work that you want to do that your newsroom is not doing and making sure that you are as public as possible in sharing that work and distributing that work and spreading that awareness. Because it's kind of like, you know, you know, people in newsrooms kind of see like, oh, wow, you know, we've got you know, if they're the type of newsletters that I've experienced, where they're, they're following my Twitter and stuff like that, and you know, I know when I'm when I'm blasting out information, and they're like, oh, boy, like, we could be missing this news in our market, you know, at least that's how I try and present it and just, and it sucks to always have to be an advocate, you know, to always have to push that advocacy and and yet, it's, it's the people who care enough to do it. That'll make that change and make it happen.

And I'll just add a couple more. For Mike's my experiences was in reporting with with patient communities and substance use disorder being being in disorder, partnering with patient communities or associations that are addressing the particular issue, and who will have good sources that they may have that are presentable to the media or who are comfortable telling their story in the media. Maybe is one way to do it. Another way is kind of hacking that system of authority so that if if, if there's people who you want to sources you want to interview who have some substance use disorder who have a specialized degree or who have some kind of other other credentials that make them seem more believable, another thing and then the ways in which you can use peer reviewed literature to supplement or backup claims that they're making. And so if they're saying that they had a certain experience and you can say in the, in the literature that the experts and the people also have that experience, you can you can kind of those are a few different methods for for getting around those issues.

Thank you for this panel. This is an awesome discussion. So my question is a touchy feely question because I don't really know how to ask it, but it seems like a lot of us are existing on this continuum of like moving from subject to source to co report it to staff. And it is a small newsroom. We don't always have the luxury of hiring staff like the dream is to have this super diverse newsroom. That's like managing and helping us understand all these constituencies. So can you talk to me a little bit about like, is there like, When is it okay to move down that continuum and step towards sourcing and when do you when do you prioritize really moving up the ladder and spending hard resources on professional consultants, freelance reporters from the beginning, from the inception of a story idea to like, like CO reporting or staffing a role specifically for a beat? Can you talk about like, with limited resources when when do you prioritize like moving up to those harder but more important and effective steps?

It's kind of up to your budget, you know, you can always find a source. So source should never be an issue where you can't find like if you can't find a disabled source, call me like, I'll help you like, oh, hell, but but

but to speak that, you know, align with organizations that do you know,

and, and also be specific with the organizations they should be organizations that are run by disabled people. There's a lot of organizations that are run by families of and you can't sometimes you gotta give those people aside i and for real, like, you can't just go with what they're telling you because maybe they don't know. Maybe they're infantilizing their relative or maybe they're making a buck off of all and so your best bet is to go with an organization that is either run by disabled people or CO run by disabled people.

And a lot of that research is out there though uh, you know, a lot of the a lot of people are our, our, you know, a lot of advocates who, yes, as journalists were trained to, to treat advocate skeptically will find treat them skeptically, but still talk to them, right, you know, military veterans in general, we partnered with an organization called Disabled American Veterans that helps us to, you know, look, there's not a there's not a universal grid coordinate of every disabled person in America right, but they are out there and they are and they are connected in communities and, and it's tough to make inroads in those communities, but But it's worth it to do the work. To do that.

I will also say that I feel like freelance reporters, you can hire them pretty easily. And so yeah, the goal is always to get staff and for disabled people to be on staff. But if you don't have the budget for it, I'm sure you have a budget for freelance. And there's a lot of freelance disabled reporters out there who would very much be willing to work for you.

It's a hard thing to get right because that even at the highest levels that The New York Times is only in the last couple of years introduced the disability reporting fellowship. And so the first person who had that role was Amanda Morris, and so she's now carved out the disability beat at the Washington Post but which was which is also interesting that there isn't that much of Laura Casey was a disability reporting fellow for The Wall Street Journal. She kind of created that position and it's kind of still trying to innovate around that. And there's, you know, I know of there's a disability beat station and buffalo but a lot of the the big papers are only now figuring this out and it's hard. It is it's very difficult to build a case in any organization

and look for grants to by the way, I mean, sometimes you'll have to, you know, I mean, what mvj our, our, our, you know, the reporters who we have that take our disability grant that is disclosed in the story. So it's transparent. But that supercharges people's budgets to be able to, to be able to report on stories more effectively. That is time. One, let's do one more. Everybody, if everybody's okay, great.

Hi. I'm Andrea. I'm from tila. I'm journalist with disability. And I just have a question. I really want to thanks for this panel for participants with all you guys, because it's very important to me I have I always want to be a journalist and that from my doctor to say me now you don't have you don't I sorry for my English. You, you don't

do any liability. than this. You can.

You can and bad. I studied years. I went to university and don't have the work in media. I don't have a position in media. I have to travel at work and other things. And that I have my own media for people with disability and the families because the media don't represent don't represent us. And in in Latin America is boring for the subjects and the subjects and come here to United State and choke and ensure we all you guys is very important to me. And I want to thanks for that. Thank you.

Thank you, Andrea. And thank you all for coming to our ideas for reporting on disability panel. I hope this was enjoyable and informative for you. And and we'll see you around just feel free to jump into us and I've got five business cards so if you guys want one take a picture.

Let me email you right now

before what I'll do is I'll send you a link to the to the grants, read about it. And and then you have my email address and you can contact Yeah, and I don't know if you have a you have a card. Okay. Okay, great. Do this. Thank you, Elizabeth. Where are you from, by the way? Okay. Are you alright, I'm gonna email you now. you email me back. Okay. Thank you. Elizabeth.

You don't want to has like, yeah, that's my kids are raised. Yeah, that's what I do. That's from military veterans in general. So sorry. Thank you

are in Nashville. And it was I was

like, Oh, that's great. I would love to share share about what I'm going to do with you.

That's awesome. That's great. And you've got my card there. Yeah, send it send me an email to and I will I'll do that. There's also I'm going to check the I don't know that Science Friday. I'm not

sure, it's so exciting.

Actually, me and Ryan were just jamming today on morphogenesis and, and like, like Alan Turing, but like I've been getting so you know everything that I studied like in school was like social and now I'm like, I'm just so engaged in science and our community is military veterans and journalism is to and they have been great backgrounds for it. So I would love to send you some people and and also show you you know, we do like like a talent scout series where like, you can like do like a webinar with our members and meet like 30 of our members at once and they'll give me their resumes and stuff too. And it's different than a career versus kind of like a cool like hanging out. Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you.

Thank you were based

on that. I've like so business casual while I'm here.

Thank you so much. Okay.

My website Russell

COVID COVID. I remember during during Ebola when I was in Africa, we did do we do like these elbows and I got really into that it was

when I first started playing together

I like in many parts of Asia where they actually just like bow. Oh, that's actually a really nice way to shave. Anyway, I'm sorry, what's your name?

Yes, it is still active. We have like maybe two or grants to get out. We've given out as much as 6000 or more words and as little as like 300. So it kind of depends on the scope of the story. But why don't you wait a minute that's fine.

No, no, no, it's not good for anybody who's doing it does often focus like we got a couple grants that were approved and didn't.

But we are more focused on veterans generally.

trying to you know, no, no, no, it's it relates to parts of the story. Yeah, that journalism benchmarking is so cool. And we've gotten great, great stories

for you,

I know so we do it well, we pay them we pay them for the research and then we also like we have like a team that helps them get it placed in publications to yeah and and then we also have and then they get paid by the outlet as well. So it's they get more money so it really incentivize it. It's kind of funny because we struggled so much to incentivize it from the top down perspective. It was like, why do we have all these freelancers that needed money and they wanted to work and we can afford to pay them as opposed to like, a big news outlet that we can't afford you. Email me today and it was

ridiculous, like oh, yeah, there's there's when you email me or send me back a link, you can also Google disability dragon right military veterans in journalism. Google at

least for me, but I google that another time.

All right, Andrew, great to meet you.

Email me today, please. And I know you're right. Yeah. How long you in town before? Yeah, yeah, I'm here until tomorrow afternoon. But I'm wondering if you want to talk more or whatever I'm already good. Reasons

Oh, great. Oh, no. Okay, I don't know if I have any left. Oh, you hear this boom.

Thank you very nonprofit poster. Yeah, and everything. Like

that Oh, yeah. That's one of the things about our community is they're not. They're not all concentrated in major metropolitan areas necessarily. They're all over I would love to introduce you to them. And we do we do all kinds of things like we did in January. We didn't January town Scout series, we called it we, we basically we worked with our partners, people who we didn't know partner, but like ganache and like spectrum. These were the ones that got the most out of it because they had so many newsrooms around the country and then all of our members show up to webinars like 30 or so will show up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's wonderful. You got my info. Okay, great. Okay. And I'm here for another

city that has a lot of parents.

I'm in town for like day and a half or whatever. So I'm probably around. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But do you have any time connected to you? Thank you. Thank you.

New publishers that had Andrea, is it Andrea, did I get that right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for what you said. That was really great. I really appreciate and you're from Chile. Did you say how cool

it gave us a new scholarship. Yeah. Okay, isn't it Oh no. Okay, awesome.

I wonder, you know, so while you're trying to break into journalism, are you doing different kinds of writing and getting published? Are you doing anything like that?

Yeah. And inspiration for

me Do you really writing in English or in Spanish? That's great because the the Spanish language community first of all, there's news deserts everywhere now where they can get news anyway. But also, you know, this is like, it's something that affects every it's something that affects everybody and like, I'm not sure where they are with it in the across the Hispanic diaspora. But, you know, like, disability reporting is it's important to spread all over and the fact that you can communicate with people who aren't getting as much news and stuff that makes you really valuable. To that news ecosystem.

You do.

Guys, we're by my work

yeah, I was like well, they said that yeah, I don't

know not as a token, not as right yeah, something that gives them like appropriate, appropriate risk that respects them. It really just there you know, that is such an important thing.

So I'm

just here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how was the coverage of it?

Very good. Okay, I am all out now. But let me email I'll email you and I give with three. I had less than I thought I did such a bad job. One second. I'm often so I'm like look I'm gonna email you right now so that you have my email address. And, and the other thing is, if you want to jump into some of our some of our stuff I can totally like introduce you to our speaker's bureau too. And, and maybe there'll be some ways that we can, that we can work together to amplify your voice to

as much as possible.

Andrea Andrea just came up. I think your brother Vladimir Stanley being so made you want to be can you? I bet you're not branded any any familiar I spoke to you via surveys me on your back, I'm not sure since you're in superclass.

So a minute

but they're actually

really sad as where to base. Okay. That's easy. To do Bobby's. Got a nice

never to write and to not only talk to people for the stories and it seems so so peaceful and interesting to

disabilities, speaker's bureau All right, have a good buddy. Yeah.

Are you gonna say something? Anybody heard it was Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're working on that. So we just did something for listening to texts

and or immersive voices

Yeah. I just wanted to ask a question or

actually shouldn't feel like somebody who knows how to like a web developer. I have a web developer that I know. Nice to meet you. I'm Mexico.

In many ways, but I may argue with that actually. Anthony Wiles when I get maybe I've just

Oh, I think it's important. And within what's that? Gonna lay? Oh, layer or layer. Narrator

Oh, is it along? Is it Allah um Well, there is that the Americans with Disabilities Act. It's, I don't think it's a law that it has to be but I do think that there are ways that it can help you like for instance one if you want to get grants, like, like we get grants from the Ford Foundation, for instance, and they are they have really good focus on disability. And so that is one way that it it incentivizes us that we need to be as compliant as we can so that we're aligned with their values when they apply for this grant. Right. And so that's where whether it's a lot maybe it is for like certain things I think that's more for like government websites now like if you need to pay a traffic ticket or something and they can hold you accountable for the traffic ticket if you're not able to grab it, you know, so

other people are very much alike, but it should be done. Interesting in our player, chairs, right? Yes. Yeah. Let me know about. Absolutely. So yesterday, thank you. I just add on our platform, and it's being used by about 2% of people. Is that a win or is that not? Like should we should be easy or not? And it made me think about how should startups you got to just AB test, look at what the 80% does and double down on that. And that of course doesn't work for disability at all.

No, and I I don't think like we're able to work really trying to achieve

so engaged especially on for the goon task. Being if any of them okay

very dry

it's really like a stadium in the

same way. I was like, this is just dry. I can't look away. I can't look away.

Exactly right. And it's different ways of taking information, but

you know, what eliminate CCO como Oh, bladder con two persona

que si classic, because of an everyman.

So I think we're trying to change the narrative around that. Another great example is by working on as an editor, and that's kind of neat and so the readability are these were fun to see are heavy it's important for the title

six, or the three

that shows you that attract regressor jargon lead and stuff. Share ideas a little bit

are you with a free

will they vary from a trade to trade

and, you know, I grew up speaking French as well that's difficult for me as well as medium doesn't outwardly identify. Right? Wherever. So I think it's changing a lot of language, getting on stage and quality around that some of the things that we're attempting I mean, we just came up with a plan

measurable goals for the most part and because of national regulation, because we're governed real nation. We're a taxpayer funded, so that goes back to a couple more that rests

on it. Ever seen that regularly, so many bad news? It's really going to show some of the Asian lunch, which are some of the things that are working to break down and just what you're doing is we're creating an accessibility some of those. So a one stop shop, and you create this thing. Once it's created, the hope is that in all sorts of different positions in the organization, whether you are supposed to work hard, whether you're someone who is writing contracts on business, whether you're a reformer going out with too cynical personal friends, I know look on the website and easily find some quick tips on how to make your whatever you're doing more accessible. biggest advice yourself comes in we'll have it going. I'm doing the survey work. Everyday. You probably see this as well. She's like, that's all fine and dandy. I don't want to be that. Who's like why don't come to my show. Now but I know that that's

I mean accessibility which of course makes it less efficient because it's like 1000 lines of code on average. Whereas if you've done it in the first place you know,

it's been exciting. Yeah. Overarching approach, but incrementally building habits to fail things. Just last week, for a reason. We're gonna tackle a story of actually American Sign Language, or we're gonna put out a video and I was there radio piece that we're not accessible. We need to provide a transcript to the radio

and for the video, we have to make sure that we can interpret it now we're not at a place where we can get a solution for every single one of our videos are unfortunately not. But we can take a few steps.

captures and

like Is there anyone

I don't know about how can you back but a lot of people see the captions on your incorporator because there's there's quite low monitors to learn the first language because it is allowed me to talk to a lot of people are very struggling. So historically, we're doing a deal with translating our drivers handbook. Yes. In this way. Yeah. It's like you're with me, I read this piece and I understand

that incredible to be here

with at least the focusing and it's kind of like the witching hour stories about how writing something out is delicious, because it's in there. Right. It's all about that. People are different people. They can access right and malicious.

And I never wrote the thing I would really want it to be available to those people. Because they did just

stay in touch system. Sorry, I don't have that answer. No, no. like ours. You might have a car I'm

just going to let you know every step so when the other side of the country likes office works,

problems within the US story. So it's like they're saying it's fine and super helpful.

I've written an article

on readability and how totally where it is. I thought it was I didn't track that. Was that

was it a reasonable time? No, I

know. We have testability where we shall

at some point for accessibility because it is what it is like it's like people and I was reading through it and I'm like,

That is awful. It turned out that I was actually in the minority of the different options most most people they had a SAS actually now is rolling back or like ridiculous

agenda. They are losing three years. This is like I said they're only they're gonna be able to really great space and directors.

Read this

as always

thanks

the whole book transfer ideas we have to start here are you going to do system testimony talking about

what to do there something I'm so I just

like a word that I use and that's why I call them a type feature type can find

What's your type trying to pick the perfect font for you? So it's interactive, which is fine but it also does explain as you scroll through it does help to explain I'm sure a lot of stuff that you already know but I thought it was a really really neat read. Old tech So CDC recently was supposed to check so that's what we're doing in the last

livestream practice suit. I'm trying to make a lot of decision not to reduce

trying to figure it out so far.

You know what I mean? I know two forms of writing some social platforms already provide a suggested all ranks when you click on it. A couple and a couple of times. That's probably true.

To stop so we'd love to do I would love to see us do more.

I think part of the transition for us is from traditional broadcaster where a lot of that has to do offerings where you have to animate the audience. So

for those players there

are one, two, so we're some of the line platforms to hopefully have Integrated Accessibility majors but then a lot of it doesn't have following us as well right? Wearing our class have used described in yellow, but that was tasked with the way that we're trying to ramp it up a notch because it's just a huge undertaking, or market size and especially our

schools already started with my schools I like that ready to start investing

in actually guaranteed VC money at a higher level. So we can very accurately level is a great starting with very good fidelity. I've had my company and one of them with Catalyst has been testing now. Generate in a reliable way very good screening platform and the other link below and it's quite easy for a second guy to fill up my first job and like testing on things now having said that, I'm actually I would have never been more than one of these like, we just want to generate like trade text first, and which look more complicated and then you bet it and you make sure it's right. And then you just spit it back out and say now we're going to leave this thing at this grade level. Just pop it right back. If you didn't like the universe question, I mean if you just asked it like, I have cucumbers and olives and cottage cheese, like what's the recipe I should make it make it great. But if you tell it like here is an article about such and such, please give it to me, like the universe and it's just way outside the box. You so they're surprising.

I didn't get through like

and then of course somebody would like read it. You'd like to read it. But you wouldn't have to have that person's like should I use current or should I use the word just to show? Yeah, I think I mean, there's already browser plugins that are appearing, they will auto level stuff for you inside. But I think there's also an opportunity for new forms to integrate, like, tabs across the top are toggled on or off. Like what regular Did you want in this ad? And maybe not probably crazy. defies ad but there is a level you know, but it could just be the original or the basic. Yes. Yeah. Simple single byte is actually the language that we believe there's a separate view instead of a memory. But it's a huge reference. Anyway, I really need to look it

up I find it really

hard I also feel like I have one friend was using it since like last fall and it eat like say stuff to me and I'm like, seems like weird and then just one day it took off. Like okay, I'm gonna make an account. And now I have to have one of the open source. self hosted. It's super easy to care like you download it. And then that's accessible, which is like the thing that power. It's what's great about it. As opposed to surveys which are more limited when you get into certain topics, or political things or other stuff like actually answer your question. And it also is not sponsored by anybody. You can just ask any question you want, and it's not being asked.

And I think for myself so while I was writing all the things that the coffee write it right, I'm putting it in Trump's articles, the abuser kind of website that has a lot of writing.

style. Right, right. Exactly. Yeah. I used to be the chair but we bought copywriting last year this is like a series that we're doing like for

the details now. I want to know for like for me, but partly because people ask it used to be our

whoa there's a case that was decided last week. Because

so in some ways, like not keeping up on it. Now. It's like, let things settle down a little bit first, because then

they don't reply when emails work and then by the time I finally get to it's much responsive and don't worry. That's the best kind of reply. Great meeting. How do you say the last name okay. Well yeah, if you I'm trying to make it what I saw was related session as opposed to table talks. I want to do this just sneak into my calendar like double booked. Yeah. Wow. Details are smaller. We're here to work together to work with bringing back Yeah. I was actually just about messaging or

like our corporation about

casting so I'm always looking for names and collaborations operations to looking for solid examples that you check for hopefully as as best practices and webinars

hopefully so sorry, I don't know how it's great. Oh, no, super useful and it's it's always

I peaked I peak during the session when that like the yogurt hit and non coffee or like,

yeah, definitely. Well,

what are you at the same time? It was two opens two hours. But I got used to it was earlier. Yep. So I'm just above Montana. Wait. Okay, two hours earlier. No, this short later. You're over Montana. You're not earlier than Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania side earlier

is earlier there. Yes. Okay.

Overseeing Okay. Okay. Yeah, so like right now it would be like 11

o'clock. Yeah, it's for all the are there? Yeah,

I think I started maybe in

a weird No, no, I'm

also a little gentler because I California

I have no I mean, I have no excuse I got in on Saturday. So you're really asking? Well, good. Yeah,

I'm gonna go see someone college I went to college. I've worked in the IT center. So I'm gonna go with one of my former colleagues. It was great. Yeah. We were like three masters because she has dedication. She was like, No, I probably get a COVID right now I've never had so my wife is gonna get on my birthday. I'm like, I get COVID You're going to be worried. It's like your birthday that's

to say proud I'm gonna receive something.

Yes, I never send this note before because the survey nobody knew what it meant. For now.

Day. Evening I think I need to go

for

our

Evening Right.

We are fortunate

enough to get the word

out for me it was an honor for you here for the talk. Yes. It was great. Yeah. That's just kind of take off here but I I'm the Canadian Broadcasting. Okay, cool. Yeah, yes, I'm based in Saskatchewan and doing a lot of work in this area, so it's good to come to this

session. Because like you're doing great.

Yeah, once in a while we can see.

Well, very good to meet you. Yeah. Sorry. I don't need to rush out Yeah. It like screaming

and then there's a couple of more conversations. Okay. Very cool. All right. Have a good?

Day. Evening

Have a good one. Did you find? Yeah, wouldn't take it longer and I was trying to edit. Maybe I didn't register, right.

You didn't get the QR code. Then.

I didn't register or maybe I maybe went to my spam or something. But also they sent it to my drum circle media email, which is my freelance email. And then I gave them my my Gmail and then I realized I wanted it to be so I don't even know where it is. And I was pretty cool with it. I don't need all the things. I came here for this panel. I know that we were budgeted for Yeah. I hadn't noticed they're doing it. In an app or something. schedule of events

this is there any way to see where there are certain

foods that's what I would like to see.

There any

interest in social

security so shall we have drinks you know, these kids to drink? Yeah, yeah, maybe should ice cream

ice cream. We also don't want to get drunk. Right? Yeah, well as drinks are so expensive in New York, and we're getting into searching and hoping to do it that's

good

so, really great

engagements here. Yeah, I couldn't tell how well we were hitting until

the end and then yeah, yeah.

Like all right.

That's the thing I was gonna say when we I decided not to because it would have taken too long but

like, when someone's talking about mental health. I was thinking like like, oh, positive mental. Health.