The recent BBC documentary Sickness and Lies promotes the toxic narrative of chronic illness fakers, adding to the hostile environment of suspicion and disbelief that people with invisible physical and mental health conditions face on a daily basis. The government has been trying to divide us by drawing an imaginary line between ‘genuine’ and ‘fake’ disabled people since at least 2010, as part of its strategy of welfare cuts and withdrawing support. Mainstream media outlets including the BBC have willingly produced propaganda about fakers and cheats in relation to benefits to help the government. Now it seems the narrative is surfacing again in relation to social medial ‘influencers’.
It’s time we stood united against it. The online chronic illness community has been devasted by the Sickness and Lies documentary, especially by the sensationalist promoting and framing of the programme. John Pring’s article for DNS is a very good account of the problems with this programme, and the way it has affected our community https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/bbc-warned-over-wildly-irresponsible-documentary-on-social-media-fakery-allegations/
We think it’s vitally important that the whole of the Disabled People’s Movement stands up to this dirty tactic by the BBC, to show that we are united and that dividing us according to whether our impairments are visible, or verifiable, or not will no longer be tolerated by any of us. We must be clear that this obsession with faking and the policing of who is genuinely disabled or ill is a manifestation of ableism. Chronic Illness Inclusion put out a tweet calling for solidarity from other DPOs: https://twitter.com/chronicinclude/status/1426467527618711559?s=20
Unfortunately we don’t currently have the capacity to produce an open letter to the BBC as we did with the BBC drama, The Real Deal, last year, which had several other DPOs signing in support. (We argued that The Real Dealconflates invisible and fluctuating illness or impairment with benefit cheating and fraud.)
But instead we are asking if other DPOs and individual disabled people would consider making a statement on social media condemning the documentary as ableist and damaging.
You can tweet John Pring’s article, and/or quote our tweet https://twitter.com/chronicinclude/status/1426467527618711559?s=20 You can use the hashtag #SicknessandLies and mention @BBCNews so your statement is visible to the BBC.
Catherine Hale
Fran Springfield
Kathy Bole
