Foundation implores journalists to avoid derogatory language when reporting PWDs

Journalists have been urged to avoid derogatory language when reporting on People living With Disabilities (PWDs).

Olayemi Samuel, programme manager for The All-rights Foundation (TAF) Africa, said this when he led his team to the Kaduna state secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ).

TAF is seeking to partner NUJ on the ‘Inclusive Kaduna for PWDs’ project.

Samuel said TAF Africa is working on strengthening institutions for disability inclusion at the grassroots.

He added that it is important for journalists and media houses who gather, process and disseminate information on a daily basis, to report on PWDs in line with global best practices.

“We want to see a shift from the way media project issues that affect PWD, especially in terms of using the right terms to describe the category of disability in discourse,” he said.

“This is very important so that the affected persons, including those at the grassroots, can be carried along in all facets of national development.

“We are also suggesting that if not already happening, a desk should be created for PWD colleagues in the union as a deliberate plan to include them right from within.”

In her response, Asma’u Yawo Halilu, Kaduna NUJ chairperson, restated the readiness of the union to support issues affecting PWDs.

She admitted the need to increase her colleagues’ capacities as far as the right terminologies on reporting PWDs are concerned.

“I want to agree with you that some of us use terms that are no longer acceptable when we are discussing or writing issues that affect PWD though we have been supportive when it comes to their issues,” she said.

“So, we are open to global updates in terms of the right terminologies.

“In most of our engagements with PWDs, we go to them and not they coming to us.

“We will continue to be supportive to them and we will do the needful to take their causes to the right quarters. Hopefully, we will have an inclusive Kaduna state.

“We have our colleague who is blind, as an elected auditor in this council, who has been employed as a lecturer in Kaduna state university.

“We will see how we can collaborate in some of our meetings to see how we can be on the same page in the area of terminologies from next year by the grace of God.”