Softening Up Public Opinion

John Pring writes:

The broadcasting watchdog has failed millions of disabled people by clearing two television programmes of disability discrimination and causing offence, including one in which some young people on disability benefits were described as “parasites”.

One disabled activist warned that Ofcom’s decisions had “opened the floodgates” to further unevidenced attacks on disabled people by broadcasters.

Disability Rights UK said both “offensive” programmes had been made “when disability hate crime is rising, when disabled people on benefits are struggling to meet the costs of food and energy and when the government was scapegoating disabled people”.

The Ofcom decisions have emerged at a time when concern is rising about disabled people being blamed for the country’s financial problems, particularly in the wake of the Labour government’s disability benefits green paper and the announcement of billions of pounds of cuts to social security.

The first decision relates to 24 complaints lodged late last year about comments made by Isabel Oakeshott, international editor for TalkTV, after she criticised chancellor Rachel Reeves for failing to use her budget to announce a “crackdown” on young people who were “supposedly too sick to work and being supported by the state”.

Oakeshott said Reeves’ budget had removed resources from those who work “in order to keep on sustaining those who frankly can’t be bothered to get out of bed and get themselves out… to… any kind of job and prefer to just sit on the sofa and order their Deliveroo and drive their Motability free vehicle and take everything that the state can offer”.

The former political editor of The Sunday Times told presenter Kevin O’Sullivan on 31 October that “people like you and me and our very many listeners” were “grafting just to try to make ends meet, and basically these people are frankly parasites”.

But Ofcom has decided not to “pursue” complaints that the programme breached its rules on causing offence and disability discrimination.

An Ofcom spokesperson said: “We recognise that Ms Oakeshott’s comments had the potential to cause offence to some viewers.

“In line with the right to freedom of expression, however, our rules allow for the broadcast of controversial and provocative opinion on topical issues, which regular viewers would expect from this programme.

“We also took into account that Ms Oakeshott’s comments were not exclusively targeted at disabled people and did not suggest that all benefits claimants were making false claims.”

Ofcom also decided not to pursue 88 complaints – again relating to rules on causing offence and disability discrimination – following a Dispatches documentary for Channel 4, Britain’s Benefits Scandal, which was broadcast on 2 December.

The programme was described by the grassroots, user-led mental health group Recovery in the Bin (RiTB) as an “atrocity” and by Disability Rights UK as “an insult to the millions of disabled people on the poverty line”.

The Benefits and Work information and advice website suggested that the “shamefully inaccurate and prejudicial” documentary was part of attempts at “softening up British public opinion” before the government’s green paper was published.

Many disabled people on social media were even more scathing and angry, describing the programme as “quietly hateful”, “dehumanising”, “scapegoating”, “distressing” and “demonising”.

But Ofcom has again decided not to pursue complaints about the programme.

An Ofcom spokesperson said: “We carefully considered complaints that this programme discriminated against people receiving benefits.

“In our view, the purpose of the programme sought to highlight failures in the system, rather than criticising people on benefits.

“While there was a brief reference to a minority of people abusing the system, we found that interviews with claimants were sympathetic and the programme recognised that there were many people with genuine needs and claims.”

Disability Rights UK (DR UK) said this week that Ofcom had shown its “utter lack of understanding of ableism and disability discrimination” in its two decisions.

Dan White, DR UK’s policy and campaigns officer, said: “These decisions have let down millions of disabled people.

“Both communications deliberately failed to address the real hardships faced by disabled claimants, such as appallingly low benefit levels and hostile benefit processes.

“Instead, they demonstrated considerable bias, attacking disabled benefit recipients, in one case resorting to offensive language and stereotypes.

“If the producers and researchers of [the two programmes] really wanted to expose the truths about disabled people and the benefits system, they could have spoken to the many thousands of disabled people living on low benefits, that leave them drowning in poverty.

“Exploring these issues would have been a genuine exposure of the benefits system whilst also informing the wider public of the true facts of living in the UK with a disability.”

RiTB was also highly critical of Ofcom.

An RiTB spokesperson said: “As we have seen with the water regulator and the utilities regulator, they are captured by the industry they are supposed to be regulating.

“Ofcom likewise is protecting bigoted corporate journalists so they can spread hate speech with impunity.”

Dr Jenny Ceolta-Smith, a disabled activist with long Covid, one of those who complained to Ofcom about the Oakeshott comments, said its responses to both sets of complaints were “not good enough”.

She said: “They fail to acknowledge the seriousness of the complaints made and to hold anyone to account.

“I cannot comprehend how Ofcom concluded that it is acceptable to make reference to people being ‘parasites’ if they are unable to work and/or have a mobility car because they receive financial support from the state.

“Essentially, Ofcom has opened the floodgates for further harmful unevidenced-based claims to be made in broadcasts without any repercussions.

“This outcome will no doubt encourage many viewers to question the legitimacy of people’s illness, disability and benefit claims.

“There is evidence of such questioning across social media, for example, and it is dangerous, fuelling prejudice and encouraging hatred towards disabled people at a pivotal time with the green paper proposals.”