Media Storm - This Is How You Do It: Disability rights journalist Rachel Charlton-Dailey

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

Media Storm hosts Mathilda and Helena meet their mainstream media matches! In this crossover bonus series with The Guilty Feminist, they interview journalists and activists trying to make an imperfect industry a little bit less so, about their noble goals and - you guessed it - the hypocrisies and insecurities that undermine them! Brought to you by The Guilty Feminist, every other Thursday. Today's guest is Rachel Charlton-Dailey (@RachelCDailey), award-winning journalist and activist, who founded The Unwritten (@TheUnwrittenPub) - a publication for disabled people to share their stories “without them being reduced to trauma or inspiration”. Just last week, she collaborated with the Daily Mirror to edit the series 'Disabled Britain', investigations and features about disability that break from mainstream news norms to centre the lived experience of disabled people. We chat about the series, her favourite story to work on, and thoughts on what our future Prime Minster could do for disabled people. The episode is hosted by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia). For more information on The Guilty Feminist and other episodes:  visit https://www.guiltyfeminist.com tweet us https://www.twitter.com/guiltfempod like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/guiltyfeminist check out our Instagram https://www.instagram.com/theguiltyfeminist or join our mailing list http://www.eepurl.com/bRfSPT For more information on Media Storm:  Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/mediastormpod or Instagram https://www.instagram.com/mediastormpod or Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@mediastormpod like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/MediaStormPod send us an email [e-mail] check out our website https://mediastormpodcast.com Media Storm is brought to you by the house of The Guilty Feminist and is part of the Acast Creator Network. The Guilty Feminist theme by Mark Hodge and produced by Nick Sheldon. This Is How You Do It theme by Samfire (@soundofsamfire)  Thank you to our amazing Patreon supporters. To support the podcast yourself, go to https://www.patreon.com/guiltyfeminist Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/media-storm. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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or to match with a td small business banking account manager Welcome to the second episode of This Is How You Do It, the new mashup series from the Guilty Feminist and Media Storm. We celebrate the marvellous, if slightly masochistic, can I say that? People working to make the mainstream media a little bit better. I'm Matilda Mallinson. And I'm Helena Wadia, and we're the hosts of Media Storm, the podcast that hands the mic to people with lived experience. and calls out what the mainstream media could be doing better to report on marginalised groups. Our guest this week is the award-winning journalist and activist who founded The Unwritten,

a publication for people with disabilities to share their stories without them being reduced to trauma or inspiration. Well, just last week, she collaborated with The Daily Mirror to edit a fantastic series centering people with disabilities. You can still catch her Disabled Britain series on The Mirror Online, which launched with an investigation into the thousands of deaths linked to government failure to act on proven failures with its disability benefits system. Please welcome... A bit of crescendo. Rachel Charlton Daily!

Hello, Rachel! Hi! Thank you so much. Rachel, you're tuning in this week from the northeast of England, which means you can't physically join us. for what we like to be our glass of ice cold weekday wine. Or rhububb juice. Sorry, all rhubbub juice.

This show is basically just a front for heat wave refreshments. How are you handling the heat? I'm handling the heat really well. Yesterday I was not handling the heat really well because I've got a chronic illness called lupus, which is triggered by heat and heat and sun. So usually when the heat hits, I just sort of got more. No, I need a lie down.

Because you actually have an excuse to do that. I do that with absolutely no excuse. I have a get-out-of-jail-free card when it comes to the heat and sun. So when people start going, oh, typical British people, I go, well, actually. Actually, you're pathetic. I'm not pathetic. Also, I have to ask, are you drinking a hot drink? No, it's iced coffee.

It's iced coffee. It looks like a hot drink, but it's iced coffee. I was about to say that's incredible. I always thought iced coffee was like this miracle sort of thing that was really hard to make but basically all you do is just put cold milk in instead of hot milk it's not that hard to make like they make it sound like it's really like amazing and stuff when you go and get it in when you go and get it in a coffee shop but literally all you do is put some ice in and pour and pour cold milk in I've been duped by the company I've been paying four pounds

fifty a time for this so you can't well okay look we we do like we do like talk about ice coffee, but obviously we're not here to talk about ice coffee, although maybe side note ice coffee podcast, just write that down. But Rachel, your recent series, Disabled Britain, has fronted the mirror over the past week. And it's got investigations and features about disability that break from mainstream news norms in a whole host of ways. What was the thinking behind the series and how did you manage to get it in such a major publication? Well, the mirror actually came to me, which was the most amazing part of it. They said they were interested in doing a sort of series,

but I don't think it was as big a conception as what I turned it into. And they were actually just asking for writers in the early stages. But I being as cheeky as I am, well, if you're going to do this right, surely you want someone who has the experience, who can source the right sort of writers, who will be able to sense check everything and be able to make sure that you're not going to turn things into trauma. So what you really need is an experienced disabled editor, someone like me.

Brainwave. And next thing I knew I was hired by the Daily Merit to host to do this whole thing. And it's just been an absolute whirlwind. And we never anticipated just how big this was going to be. Like I knew from my own experience how much I needed it, but I never realized how much the community needed it. The feedback we've seen as been incredible. God, I've been approaching freelance journalism. wrong. Instead of pitching stories, I should just be pitching me.

Shut up, man. I think, I think it comes a lot with, a lot with, because a lot from the fact that I'm just, there's a saying, there's a saying up north that Shiband's getting out, and this is something that I've definitely taken on as my own personal philosophy. And I think if I don't, if you don't ask, you're not going to get it, you know. It's exactly why we need people like you in the editorial room. At the same time, I don't want to play The Daily Mirror Down. They listened to me in absolutely every aspect, changing headlines that I thought didn't fit what we were trying to do. Because obviously, you've got to draw readers in with headlines and stuff,

but I never wanted headlines to seem clickbait or traumatic or anything like that. We made sure we only had the right writers. And even if they were celebrities and stuff, we didn't want their stories to be, I'm disabled and it doesn't stop me. And that sort of thing. We didn't want those sort of stories. just every single aspect the Daily Mirror listened to us like even up until the name like those parts

where we were still using language like people with disabilities and stuff like that where disabled people don't really like the term people with disabilities because it takes away our personhood you know it's just how much they listen to me and I just never expected it because I've never experienced that as a disabled person and it's cool like I've worked I've worked in this industry for five six years and I've never experienced that as a disabled writer I've worked for so many, so many publications who've used, who've used my trauma for their own clickbait and it's

just never, it's been amazing like to work with them. Something, something that felt really different to me about your disabled Britain series to other mainstream coverage of disability I've seen was the imagery. We love the imagery you used me from a style perspective, mostly. But what was the kind of picture that you were trying to paint and who were the photographers that you trusted to deliver this? So one of the main photographers on the series was a really good friend of mine, Shona Cobb, and she is a disabled photographer herself. And that was really important to us.

We wanted, like, as I said, we wanted everyone where possible to be disabled. We didn't want the images to be of disabled people looking sad and disabled, and sick kiddies and super inspirational photos of, like, of disabled kids running marathons and stuff like that. We wanted them to be real people. We wanted them to be real people living their lives. And, you know, disabled people, disabled women especially are fashionable people. We are people who look, we are people who are happy and comfortable in our skin.

So when we had, when we had Amy walking around the streets with Eva, we had her in a gorgeous dress and we had Ava in a lovely bowtie. And when we had Dr. Hanna Bar and Brown, we had her in a dungarees that, until I realized that we're in the paper, had vulvers all over them. I was like, I've just gotten vulva dungaroos in the Daily Mirror. You're like, oh, hey, mirror, we're going to smash some barriers with this great disabled Britain series. P.F, there's some secret vulva's in there too.

That's one of your greatest achievements to date. Well, you know, presumably many of the issues that you just described in terms of what the coverage is usually like, presumably a lot of those issues you described lie behind your decision to create the unwritten. How did you come to found that publication? I've been working in the media for five, six years now. And I always found it hard to get stories published that were specifically about disability

that weren't heavily relying on trauma or weren't heavily relying on inspiration. And when I was, they were still edited to include, can you tell us how it made you feel and things like that? And it was when my feelings weren't relevant that I was being asked to include my feelings and like being asked like really inappropriate questions like like how it affected my family and stuff like that and I was like I was just getting sick of having to mind my own trauma and then of course the pandemic happened and that was an especially awful time for disabled and vulnerable people because it was a time when you know we were we were being shut inside our houses disabled people were getting we're getting really sick we were dying at a disproportionate rate and I was finding it hard and harder and it wasn't just me. It was a lot of my disabled freelance writing friends. We're finding it harder and harder to get our stories published. We were being told,

oh, we've already had a story on that. This doesn't apply to the wider public. And I'm like, six out of ten deaths are disabled people. Why are you not? Why is this not front page news on every single newspaper? So I was just getting angrier and angrier and anger and anger that I couldn't write this and that nobody wanted me to write this. and I've got my best friend to owe for this. My best friend, I think she got sick of me one day and she went, right, why don't you just start your own publication? And I don't think she ever expected me to be serious.

And I went, okay, I'm doing it, I'm doing it. The response was absolutely huge and it's all just gone from there, really. The biggest thing that we wanted to do was pay writers, so we crowdfunded as much as we could because far too much disabled people are expected to tell their stories and not paid for it. yeah we launched in November 2020 and since then

we've just gone from strength to strength and it just keeps getting bigger and better and I don't know where we're going to go from there but I'm really excited to see where we go I get really emotional every time I talk about it because I love it so much it just means so much to me you know like the disabled community means so much

and all I ever want to do is just give disabled people a voice because we're full voiceless in all of this yeah and I'm sure it means so much of the people who read it as well. We do this little game on this is how you do it. I say we do it. This is episode two, so pretty much traditions being made as we speak. But, you know, we're calling it the genie game.

You get a genie giving you one wish with what you would change about the mainstream media. But I really feel like you almost don't need it. You're just your own genie. You're just doing whatever you dream. You're making it a reality. You know, to spare you some of the legwork, let's just pretend that today, Helena's your genie. Look at Helena.

She's a little genius. Also, as we established before, it's a stingy genie because you don't get three wishes. You just get one. Pretty crap genie. I mean, so what are you going to ask Helena? One wish to change anything about the mainstream media go. People are allowed to tell their own stories and it's not going to get turned into turned into trauma or inspiration that we're allowed to tell our own stories authentically.

And I'm going to add a little caveat onto this and that when we do tell our stories that the language that is used is authentic language and not outdated language because there is still a lot of outdated language used around disability in the media. So technically I just gave myself two wishes there. Yeah, Jeannie, are we going to allow that? I'll allow that because they're very... Very intertwined. But actually, I do have a question about the language, though, because, you know, you mentioned using disabled people rather than people with disabilities. When MediaStorm, we did our episode in series one about ableism, we had a lot of various feedback about whether people preferred disabled people or people with disabilities. Our guests kind of, you know, saying, whatever, we don't really mind. And we used both. But then we got DMs saying, you know, you shouldn't have used. used disabled people you should have used people with disabilities so yeah it's a minefield to be

honest as a whole the disabled community prefers disabled people because we don't we don't need to be reminded that we're people first we know where people you know like it's it's not a thing that we need to be reminded a lot of the time it's it's non-disabled people like to go oh well we don't see you with disabled you know it's one of those sort of things but at the same time there are There are people with different conditions who prefer to use that language. So it's always best to ask. Well, Rachel, maybe you can tell us about your favourite story you've ever reported on or curated or edited. My favourite story I've worked on is when I worked on a story for Hofpost about disabled users of TikTok.

TikTok approached me originally because they had a series, I think it was like their top 10 or something. and there was disabled people involved in it. And I thought, oh, yeah, this is great. Well done for all your inclusivity, TikTok. But then I looked into it, and I realized it wasn't the top 10. It was a top 100. And there was only four people who were disabled involved in the top 100. And then as I was talking to disabled people,

I was finding out all these terrible things about TikTok, how they were shadow banning disabled people instead of blocking and disabling accounts that were abusing disabled people. Basically, they make it so people can't see your account. And they thought it was a way to protect disabled users instead of deleting the accounts of people who were abusing them. Oh, how patronising.

And then in some cases, when the disabled users were standing up and fighting what TikTok were doing, they were deleting the disabled users' accounts. Victim-blaving. When you approached TikTok with this story, what did they say? response. I got this guy. I don't think his name was Dan, but I want to say his name was Dan because he was such a Dan. Yeah, I can, I can picture him already. Sorry, all the Dan's out there.

We love you. But I said, I'm not available for phone calls. I was like, it's quite late. I'm sorry, I'm not available for phone calls. He got in my number somehow. He kept ringing me to give me a statement over the phone, even though, like I said, please, please send me this statement. and he just kept barrage and we were like absolute bullshit saying that like, oh, these were policies that were put in place to protect the users, we're changing the policies and we need to know the accounts that had been affected but we can't see this happening to anyone.

Whilst this was happening, one of the accounts that I told him about again got deleted. It just got worse and worse. I'm getting so much agro when I just want a statement. Dan sent me a statement by email. really patronisingly. And we didn't, we ended up using, like, just a sentence. But that's, that is how you know when you found a story. When, when they call you up on the phone to tell you that you don't have a story, we're changing it, there's no story. But they're like,

we're going to call you like 15 times just to tell you that there's no story here, okay? Like, did you compute, there is no story here. Nothing we are worried about. They did eventually end up changing some of the policies around, uh, around harassment. on TikTok. I mean, I can't officially take responsibility for that, but they did change some of the policies around harassment. But it's ridiculous. It really is. All the while they were bragging about how many unique users they had on TikTok and stuff. And I was like, yeah, it's great. You've got all these unique users. But half of them are pricks. How many of those are telling women to get their tits out and go kill themselves, you know? What exactly. And I think that is a good space for us to

take a little break, have a little sip of ice coffee or maybe something stronger after that, and we'll be back in just a few seconds. Welcome back to This is How You Do It. Well, Rachel, in the UK, we're looking down the barrel of a pretty tumultuous times. The Conservatives are choosing our fourth Prime Minister in six years, and we hilariously managed three education secretaries in as many days. Any hot takes? I just hope that one of them likes disabled people in some way, shape or form

and doesn't want us all dead, but I kind of see that happen in any time. That's a big ask, that's a big ask. It's a really big ask, it really is. Who do you think is the least depressing option? Penny Morden, maybe, I don't know. Just because we know the least about her, so it's the least damaging information about her.

For real, kind of, what would be the immediate policy that you think needs implemented in terms of helping disabled people? I know that there are so many in this country, but what would be the immediate one? We need an overhaul of the benefit system. And we need just more. We need more in the benefit system, but we also need how the benefit system is assessed.

At the minute, the benefit system is more about proving you're disabled. Benefit assessments should be done by trained professionals, and at the minute, they're not. Who is doing the benefits assessment? They're basically just paid assessors. They're not trained doctors who do them, you know, and you don't have to have any sort of knowledge

about disability or medicine or any sort of illnesses to actually do the assessments. You're given just a checklist. It's not viable, especially for chronic illnesses, because you're asked things like how, How far can you walk and how many hours can you work and things like that? And yeah, I could do, I could, I could probably walk quite far on my good days, but on my worst days, I can barely get out of bed, you know, and what, what are you asking me to assess here?

And it's just, there's just not a good assessment, there's not a good assessing process, because if they say you on a good day, they're going to write down on the form, she looked healthy. Right. Well, Penny Morden, if you're listening. Yeah, I've got a sort of penny. You're probably not going to, though. Yeah, sort of it. Rachel Charlton Daly, thank you so much for joining us on This Is How You Do It.

Where can people follow you and do you have anything to plug? So I am on Twitter and Instagram, Rachel C. Daily. Please go and follow The Unwritten, which is at the Unwritten pub on Twitter and Instagram and Theunwritten.com.com. We are still crowdfunding at the Unwritten, the Mirror series, is still online if you look for disabled Britain and the mirror. And I think that's about everything that I've got to plug. Lovely listeners, make sure you catch the latest guilty feminist episode on Giving Birth,

a hilarious episode featuring Kiry Pritchard McLean, Jessica Fosterkew, music from Grace Petrie, and special guest Melody Robinson, who runs All Things Birth and Beyond. And of course, the episode is hosted by Deborah Francis White. And on next week's media storm, we have something a little bit different. We will be airing our exclusive investigation into non-offending paedophile networks,

speaking to people who have clinical paedophilia but have never acted on it, and a denied therapy in healthcare that is proven to prevent abuse. That'll be out next Thursday, in time for your morning commute. See you then.