Disability, Language and the Media in Zimbabwe: Perspectives of Media Companies on People with Disabilities

Abstract

Generally, societies tend to name-calling people with disabilities (PWDs) using their physical appearance or mannerisms. These circumstances apparently continue to be overlooked and passed on as despotic socialisation despite a person’s educational status and the person-first discourse advocacy enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and Sustainable Development Goals. The media frontiers equally contribute to this through reports that are less sensitive to disability as they seem to ignore its consequences and the indelible marks it leaves on people’s lives. Thus, this qualitative study employed narratives, document analysis and in-depth open-ended interviews to seek the views of six purposively selected participants with various disabilities. Critical analysis theory and content analysis design assisted in identifying some of the inappropriate language used by media reporters. Emerging themes were drawn from triangulated data to propose meaningful ways to mend the fractured relationships between disability language issues and the media. Generated patterns from the study demonstrated that media coverage was biased in reporting crimes and anomalies committed by PWDs rather than their achievements. This led to the portrayal of PWDs as criminals and people from whom nothing good would come. The participants claimed that such reports made them hopeless and less recognised, so they resorted to fulfilling this prophecy. The participants hoped their voices could be heard, their self-esteem supported and their capabilities rebuilt through the incorporation of disability studies in media programmes as means of retooling the media industry in Zimbabwe and use this study’s findings to reframe media representations of people with disabilities.