The right-wing corporate media ramped up its attacks on chronically ill and disabled benefit claimants to a gargantuan degree in 2024. Coverage of disability benefits in the Telegraph, the Times, and the Daily Mail together sky-rocketed more than 1130% from 2023’s output.
A Canary analysis of nearly 300 articles published by the three major outlets between 2020 and 2024 found that the media sites had put out 91% of their coverage on disability benefits in 2024 alone.
The data reveals the startling scale of the corporate press’s targeting of disabled people over the past year. What’s more, the analysis demonstrates how politicians shape the media agenda, and vice versa, how a dutiful lapdog corporate press paves the way for repressive government welfare policies.
Attacking disabled benefit claimants
In 2024, the political and media establishment doubled-down in its vilification of disabled benefit claimants.
Throughout the course of the year, both the former Conservative government, and the Labour administration that succeeded it, made a swathe of announcements on plans to reform the UK’s social security system.
From the former Tory government’s harmful plans to shift the goal-posts on the work capability assessment (WCA), to Labour’s heavy hints it will follow through with this, the Tory bill to spy on benefit claimant bank accounts, to Labour’s tribute act to the election-stranded legislation, the Canary held both governments’ feet to the fire over the ceaseless onslaught of clampdowns.
Similarly, we demolished misleading, and oftentimes disgusting narratives that the right-wing corporate media spewed. Naturally, it pushed out these damaging tropes in its grotesque bid to scapegoat a community it consistently sidelines in its reporting and within its newsrooms.
It was plain to see that the right-wing foghorns were blaring out ever more bile on benefit claimants. Just as evident was that chronically ill and disabled people were their primary target.
Now, the Canary has sought to put this uptick in media ableism in numbers. And what our analysis revealed was pretty much what we anticipated. Specifically, we uncovered a starkly colossal climb in the corporate media’s focus on disability benefit claimants.
Soaring spike in coverage
The Canary reviewed every article the Telegraph, the Times, and the Daily Mail put out with the key terms “disability benefits” or “sickness benefits” between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2024. These included a range of news, analysis, editorials, and opinion pieces.
From this, we found that stories on disability benefits in 2024 soared by 1132% from 2023’s coverage. Specifically, articles containing these key terms increased from just 22 in 2023, to 271 in 2024.
Before 2023, results for our search terms barely registered on the three media sites’ radar. Between 2020 and 2022, the Canary identified just four articles.
The Canary also searched for individual references to separate benefits. This included PIP, DLA, ESA’s support group, and Universal Credit with no work requirements. This was to account for any evolution in the language and discourse around these types of health-related benefits.
However, very few additional articles cropped up for the period between 2020 to 2023 for these. Similarly, we looked for mentions of the (outdated) term ‘incapacity benefit’ and had the same result. Overall then, we can’t attribute the increase in media attention on chronically ill and disabled benefit claimants to changes in terminology.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that these outlets weren’t targeting disabled benefit claimants during this period. After all, there was still a flurry of articles throughout this timeframe that did so. However, it does show that these outlets markedly ramped this up in 2024 by comparison.
Nothing new for disabled benefit claimants
We also know that the corporate press has persistently singled out disabled claimants amidst successive Tory government blitz over benefit reform in years past. For instance, a 2012 study comprehensively reviewed corporate media output during the New Labour government years.
The analysis explored more than 6,000 articles across two overlapping time periods, according to data availability. The first looked at texts that the Times, the Mirror, the Guardian, the Independent, and the Daily Mail had put out between 1995 and 2011. Meanwhile, the study was able to examine articles in the Telegraph, the Sun, and the Daily Express between 2000 and 2011.
Predictably, it found that the content of coverage was “skewed towards negative representations.” Significantly, it set out how the high (and disproportionate) percentage of coverage on benefit fraud and claimant undeservingness more generally directly influenced societal stigma of benefit claimants.
Moreover, the study illustrated how the “language and content of ‘negative’ coverage” had shifted over time. In particular, it found that there was a clear point – 2008 – at which the ‘scrounger’ narrative began to enter circulation in the press.
Meanwhile, a 2012 case study on Murdoch’s main money-spinner and hate platform the Sun concluded that:
increasingly negative perceptions of disabled people in society are congruent with dominant portrayals of disability benefit recipients as undeserving in the right-wing press.
Notably, the paper laid out that these narratives had real-world consequences. Namely, this was how they built the case for the Tories to unleash their devastating sweep of reforms hitting disabled claimants as part of the Welfare Reform Act (2012).
And just on an anecdotally observed level, there’s been no shortage of media smears of benefit claimants as fraudsters or a burden to society across the long fourteen years of Tory parliamentary reign either. Disabled people know this without needing to see the numbers – because they’ve been at the receiving end of it in wave after wave of harmful benefit reforms.
In short, it’s obviously the case that corporate media ableism and attacks on disabled benefit claimants is nothing new.
Nonetheless, what we can see is that the focus on ‘disability benefits’ as a broad grouping, or the concept of so-named ‘sickness benefits’ has spiked in 2024 by comparison to the previous four years.
How the discourse has evolved
Essentially, spurious aspersions on disabled people’s deservingness for disability benefits appears to now be all the rage – again. The latest linguistic fad in the corporate press for vilifying them seems to revolve around a few things:
- Attacking people claiming ‘disability benefits’ like PIP and DLA, and those claiming the health-related component of other working-age income-based benefits. These obviously included benefits like Universal Credit’s limited capability for work-related activity (LCWRA) group, and ESA’s support group entitlements. Arguably, the latter corresponded with the then Conservative government’s move to abolish the WCA.
- Sickness. So-called ‘sickness benefits’, ‘long-term sickness’, and ‘sick note culture’ came up often. People newly disabled in the fallout from the pandemic have been ripe for the corporate media’s abuse. And it shows in the figures.
- A term that even the right-wing dishonourable (see WASPI women betrayal for one) Liz Kendall was loathe to use, before she and her department proceeded to bandy it about anyway. That is, ‘economic inactivity’, or ‘economically inactive’. This is of course in spite of the fact that disabled people who are not working are very much still economically active – since they still spend to participate in daily life.
It’s also notable that conversations around so-called economic inactivity and long-term sickness began to appear in search results in 2022.
Significantly, this happens to be post the government lifting Covid restrictions. In other words, this discourse cropped up when the media cycle had moved into its post-pandemic reporting. Obviously, the Canary isn’t saying the pandemic is over. It’s not – and this is especially true for vulnerable populations. Ultimately, Covid continues to infect, disable, and kill people.
However, it’s clear that the corporate media’s current fixation on shunting chronically ill and disabled people into work has emerged in the aftermath of the height of the pandemic.
And more to the point, these outlets have weaponised the surge in people leaving work due to long-term sickness. That would be the long-term sick that the height of a global health pandemic left battling astronomical rates of long Covid. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS)’s latest count, that was over two million people by the way. The Canary has consistently pointed out that unsurprisingly, the corporate media continues to conveniently ignore this fact.
Frequent demonising themes
The Canary also identified a number of themes that occurred frequently across the data. Many of these involved misleading and false narratives we’ve repeatedly debunked. Assigning each article to one of these themes, we found that the following routinely cropped up as the key focus:
- The need for a ‘crackdown’ on claimants (9.7%)
- The ‘benefits bill’/ cost to the taxpayer and UK economy (8.7%)
- Fraud or abuse of the welfare system (6.7%)
Many of these narratives came up in articles we assigned under different themes too. The above represents articles where the main or major thrust of the piece revolved around the particular narrative. However, articles would often mention other themes as points within their argument as well, even if it wasn’t the primary focus. In short then, these fallacious framings were actually a lot more prevalent than the above figures suggest.
Of just those articles which focused on disability benefits, unemployment, and benefits more broadly, the results are as respectively for each of the above: 13%, 11.7%, and 9%. This applied to 222 articles in the dataset. Effectively, this excludes articles about separate topics, which only mention disability benefits in passing.
Other notable narratives included:
- Rates of so-called ‘worklessness’ or ‘economic inactivity’ (8.1%)
- People being better off on benefits, or benefits too generous (4.5%)
- and immigration (4%).
The final theme managed to exhibit ableism and anti-migrant racism both – at the same time. Notably, these articles typically took the divisive angle that pushing long-term sick people back into work would help curb immigration. The patently racist-motivated implication behind this was obviously that employers could reduce their reliance on migrant workers if more British people on long-term sick leave returned to work.
Politicians pushing narratives
Unsurprisingly, politicians and their advisers drove a significant proportion of the three outlets’ coverage of stories directly focusing on disability benefits, benefits more broadly, and unemployment. The Canary identified a total of 50 articles which comprised largely of policy announcements and plans, or comments from current politicians.
The three media outlets published all but three of these in 2024. The Daily Mail, and the Telegraph published these in the final two-quarters of the year. Two were in relation to then DWP boss Mel Stride’s announcements on future welfare reforms. The other pertained to then Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn statement.
Meanwhile, the outlets put out the bulk of 2024’s politician-instigated content in the final quarter of the year. In fact, the October to December period accounted for 26 articles – more than half. Notably, this corresponded with a slew of the Labour government’s ‘Get Britain Working’ plan, and welfare policy announcements. Ten of the articles in this period outlets published the weekend preceding, up to and including the white paper publication date on Tuesday 26 November.
Alongside this, a couple of articles revolved around Labour’s announcement of placing job coaches in mental health settings. Other pieces related to Kendall’s rhetoric around ramping up social security conditionality for young people. Additionally, Labour’s plans for the WCA reforms featured in one article.
Most of the remaining articles involved comments from ministers, Tory leadership candidates, and peers.
The second quarter of the year hosted the next largest output, with ten articles in total. Primarily, this coincided with a number of welfare reform announcements then prime minister Sunak made ahead of declaring the July General Election.
Who’s spearheading the attacks on disabled benefit claimants?
It demonstrates a media-parliamentary symbiotic ecosystem. Essentially, it’s evidence of the servile client media co-ordinating in a mutually beneficial arrangement. This is one where politicians set the agenda, and the corporate press acts as a willing collaborator in scapegoating marginalised communities.
Conversely though, the Canary has also illustrated that this also works in reverse as well. Notably, outlets like the Telegraph and Times in particular have moved to disseminate the policy takes of right-wing think tanks like the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).
Of course, this is the brainchild of none other than infamous former DWP secretary Iain Duncan-Smith. Ahead of the 2024 party conference season, the Canary flagged how these outlets platformed CSJ research on welfare reforms.
So it should also come as little surprise that the Canary found that a number of articles in our dataset referenced the CSJ. In total, there were 27 that name-dropped the think tank. The Telegraph put out the majority of these (17), while the Times, and Daily Mail published five each. Four of these were in 2023, but the rest entered circulation in 2024.
As the Canary previously pointed out, politicians and media pundits have been routinely citing CSJ statistics. Specifically, they’ve used the CSJ’s numbers on long-term sick people that they claim could reenter the workforce. We interrogated the basis for its figure, and found it palpable nonsense. Nonetheless, the damage is clearly done, given how often these outlets are relying on CSJ evaluations.
Essentially, policy think tanks like the CSJ blur the lines between the political and corporate media establishment. They do this so effectively, that it’s hard to make out who’s driving the charge.
In that way, it’s maybe more accurate to say that these actors have worked in tandem. In other words, they’ve colluded to stigmatise disabled benefit claimants.
Whichever way round then, it’s patently clear that they’re playing to the same hymn sheet over punching down on disabled people at present.
It’s even worse than this
It’s worth noting that this analysis isn’t comprehensive. The Canary focused on the two select key terms in its search. However, this wouldn’t have captured all the instances of the outlets targeting chronically ill and disabled people claiming benefits, or not in employment.
For example, doing a search of the sites for the key term “long-term sickness” paired with “benefits” brought up a significant number more articles not included in our analysis. The Canary didn’t review these in-depth as with the other search terms. Given this, the following figures represent the number of search results, rather than the number of articles that are actually relevant. Moreover, some of these will be duplicates of results from the other searches.
However, the data still gives an approximate impression of the overall trend. And once again, the results show a vast spike in stories in 2024.
What’s more, the Canary explored coverage in only three major papers. However, many other outlets participated in this punching down parade on disabled benefit claimants too.
Nevertheless, the analysis still paints a picture of the increasingly hostile, toxic corporate media environment for disabled claimants.
Topping the tables for the most servile media suck-up…
And the award for the most overzealous political shill and ableist hate-monger goes to: the Telegraph. This was for an astonishing total of 143 articles. In short, it put out almost half (48%) of the articles the Canary identified in our search. It means the right-wing broadsheet pipped both the Murdoch-mouthpiece and the vile right-wing shitrag to the post by some mile.
Top marks too for the tripartite of washed-up political has-beens still clamouring to be relevant. Bottom of the barrel-scrapers for political commentary ranged from DWP ‘grim reaper’ Iain Duncan-Smith, to genuine ghoul Matthew Parris, and across the political divide (though not really) to the biggest sore loser the world has likely ever known, the epitome of privileged and entitled white men-kind – Jonathan Ashworth.
Ultimately, this is the media political mouthpiece machine at its finest work. The bottom line is this: the corporate right-wing press ratcheted up its coverage of disability benefit claimants in 2024.
And it’s all part of the politically-motivated attack on chronically ill and disabled people’s rights. Of course, this has long been a mainstay of cruel successive governments. That this uptick in coverage of disability benefits has shot up in an election year is also clearly no coincidence. In the past year, both major parties have vilified non-working disabled people in their bids to pave the way for the next callous wave of punitive welfare reforms.
Media manufacturing consent for more harm
Now, it’s evident that the new Labour government is using the media to manufacture consent for its largely undisclosed plans. Of course, this could all therefore have damning ramifications where future welfare-related policy is concerned.
As the Canary’s Rachel Charlton-Dailey has reiterated this new year already, the media typically steps up these demonising narratives ahead of whichever government-of-the-day’s move to embed ever more restrictive, punitive welfare reforms and cuts.
The fact that these outlets churned out the bulk of these articles in the final quarter of the year speaks volumes too. At the end of the day, it’s all about laying the groundwork for Labour’s Spring policy announcements. And if the rise of the corporate media’s demonising rhetoric in the past year is anything to go by, disabled people should brace for another round of welfare odes to Duncan-Smith.
Featured image via the Canary
