Disability Journalism

With microphone in hand, I approached a group of blind men who were threatening to throw themselves off a bridge into Seoul’s Han River.

I was reporting back in 2008 about efforts to abolish the exclusive right for South Korea’s visually impaired to work as masseurs. If that provision was lost, these protestors said they’d have no other way to earn a living.

This was one of the first stories concerning disability I had ever filed. I thought I could build rapport with those guys, so I told them about my own visual condition.

“That’s nice,” one of the men told me. “But you still don’t know what it’s like to be a blind Korean.”

It was a rebuff I couldn’t dispute. It’s stayed with me as a check on my own assumptions on whatever I’m covering, even stories that I think I have some inside knowledge about.

My experience as a journalist with a disability has informed my worldview and is a reason why I launched my Montclair State University course on disability representation in media back in 2021.

We’re now about halfway through this semester and just started the section on disability-focused reporting. It’s the part I enjoy teaching the most, even though for many of my students, who are not journalism majors, it’s probably the segment they’re the least excited about.

But, I want them to become more critical media consumers. And I think one way to do that is to view content through a lens on disability.

They watch news reports like these and critique how the disabled subjects are reported on.

What’s missing from this story about the non-disabled student taking her disabled classmate to the prom?

And what’s really so “incredible” about this visually impaired kid who plays the piano?

There are ways to tell these stories that don’t reduce these disabled individuals to charity cases or sources of inspiration.

Does a school segregate its students in different wings of the building so they don’t have much interaction with their “mainstream” peers? How challenging is it for a blind musical prodigy to get ahold of Braille charts, or did his parents experience any pushback from neighborhood piano tutors?

Every story has a disability angle and I ask my class to identify some stories currently in the news that could be reframed with that focus. Some of the examples they pointed to included how social media bans could affect disabled kids, what the end of remote work means for disabled employees, and will the resumption of humanitarian aid to Gaza include assistive devices?

For my example (since I never miss an opportunity to shamelessly promote my own work) I show them the trailer to my documentary Invisible Impact: Disability on Climate Change’s Frontline.

I think I’ve come a long way since that incident on the Seoul bridge.

What’s in the news that you think has an unreported disability angle? Send me your pitches by replying to this newsletter. I won’t steal your story ideas.

The National Center on Disability and Journalism is now accepting entries for the 2025 Katherine Schneider Journalism Award for Excellence in Disability Reporting. There are categories for both large and small markets, a student competition, and it’s also open to international submissions.
And I’ll probably be a judge for one of those slots.
Read more about the contest.