Background

The community of people with disabilities in Indonesia has been long known as a group of society whose rights are often marginalized from various aspect of life. According to the World Health Organization (WHO)’s estimation, 15 percent of the world’s population is people with disabilities. Based on this estimation, although it has been a challenge to conclude the approximate population of people with disabilities in Indonesia, at least 20 million people are persons with disabilities in the country.

The big representation of population from people with disabilities does not seem to have a place in the media in comparison with other more popular human rights or environmental issues. The societal structure in Indonesia is still lacking of the correct perception in seeing, interacting, and communicating with people with disabilities. This condition makes things more challenging in expecting an awareness and empowerment for people with disabilities that are equal to non-disabled people in Indonesia.

The depiction of one community in the media plays a major role in shaping public perception of that community, including the community of people with disabilities. The number of news on the correct perception of people with disabilities is still far lower than the number of disability-related issues in Indonesia. The most common news content regarding people with disabilities is merely depicted as the objects of charity and often focused on the incapability due to the types of the disability. There has not been any educative broadcasting program that provides precise perception about people living with disabilities.

Unfortunately, people with disabilities in Indonesia are often depicted according to common negative stereotypes by the media due to the deep-rooted stigma and inaccurate perceptions about the abilities of disabled people in carrying out their daily activities, including contributing actively in all sectors of the economy. The media can play an important role in removing some barriers in daily lives of persons with disabilities – physical, attitudinal, legal, regulatory, communication – to encourage full participation of persons with disabilities in society and to develop their potentials in achieving equal rights and opportunities.

One of PROPEL-Indonesia’s project strategies is to support advocacy and awareness raising activities targeting the general public, and key stakeholders. Media is believed to play a crucial role in shaping mindsets of the general public, for effective awareness raising and advocacy of disabled people’s rights.Through media, PROPEL-Indonesia seeks to build capacity and raise awareness of representatives of media.

By establishing a collaboration between PROPEL-Indonesia, Diffa magazine, and AJI Jakarta, a workshop is planned to support representatives of media for a shift from a charity-based to a right-based approach in media portrayal with articles and pictures featuring the correct perception of persons with disabilities without eliminating their basic human rights.

Objectives and Outputs

The objective of the workshop is to raise awareness on rights of people with disabilities, and influencing media decision makers in covering disability topic.

The workshop aims to:

• build a positive perception of disability issues among journalists in the mainstream media in Indonesia through a rights-based approach in portraying persons with disabilities;
• minimize false and negative perceptions made in covering stories relating to disability;
• increase the quantity and quality of news around disability topic;
• train media professionals to be a bridge of knowledge to other mainstream media journalists on one hand, and the general public on the other hand.

The outputs of the workshop are:

• During the Media Workshop in February 2013, one of the outputs will be draft media guidelines for the media on disability issues. This document is to be finalised, in collaboration with AJI and the ILO - and will then be published to be disseminated to media representatives in Indonesia. For background material, the existing ILO media guideline is to be used (/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_emp/---ifp_skills/documents/publication/wcms_127002.pdf)
• Workshop report, to be shared with the partners, participants and DPOs for organization of similar workshops in the provinces. The report is to contain the recommendations for media training on disability for journalists and reporters, supporting the PROPEL-Indonesia activities and work on the national level and in the priority provinces.
• The Participants will in the working groups provide with list of ideas on articles/essays/videos/other forms of media messages from each participant on how to portray disability issues in their own work. These will be followed-up on during the refresher training for media later in 2013, as per the project workplan.