Rising Flame, in collaboration with the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities (Government of India), the Office of the State Commissioner for Persons with Disabilities, Goa, the UN in India, and UN Women, organised Spotlight, held a media sensitisation workshop on inclusive and intersectional reporting on disability on Monday, 22 September 2025. The workshop brought together 50 journalists, editors, media and communication professionals to focus on disability representations in newsrooms and narratives across the country.
Through a learning section, Disability-inclusive and Intersectional Media Representation and Reporting led by Rising Flame, the workshop explored how language and framing of stories impacts attitudes of larger society. The interactive session opened up conversation around framing stories to portray the diverse experiences of persons with disabilities and to build a culture of accurate and respectful reporting.
Founder and executive director of Rising Flame, Nidhi Goyal who co-facilitated the session said: “Too often, the media paints us people with disabilities as either heroes or objects of pity. We need to go beyond both. There is a need to amplify disabled voices and building nuanced, human-centred stories. Since media plays a critical role in shaping public understanding and influencing policy, journalists can ensure disability is covered with accuracy, dignity, and a rights-based lens.”
In the second session Senior Journalists Share Experiences on Reporting Gender and Disability led by UN Women, we had the panel moderator, Sudeshna Mukherjee, Head of Communications, UN Women India with some experienced journalists and communication professionals as panellists: Ms. Uzmi Athar, Chief Correspondent, PTI, Mr. Parvinder Singh, Head of Communications, World Food Programme in India, Ms. Pooja Pande, former Co-Chief Executive Officer, Chambal Media, writer and Ms. Bhanupriya Rao, Founder of BehanBox. Panellists addressed some important facets of reporting on disability. Such as, disability is not just a beat and there is a need to focus on it as central and important like we do for other things like health etc.
One example cited by panellist, Uzmi Athar was: “When we speak about natural disasters, we need to include how persons with disabilities are impacted by this. When we frame a story that someone braved to reach a polling booth. We should be asking the question of why he had to brave the “difficulties” to vote.”