• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • About DNS
  • Subscribe to DNS
  • Advertise with DNS
  • Support DNS
  • Contact DNS

Disability News Service

the country's only news agency specialising in disability issues

  • Home
  • Independent Living
    • Arts, Culture and Sport
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Employment
    • Housing
    • Transport
  • Activism & Campaigning
  • Benefits & Poverty
  • Politics
  • Human Rights
You are here: Home / News Archive / Protesters call on Daily Mail to ‘stop the lies’ about benefits claimants

Protesters call on Daily Mail to ‘stop the lies’ about benefits claimants

By guest on 4th April 2011 Category: News Archive

Listen

Disabled activists have demonstrated outside the offices of the Daily Mail to protest about the newspaper’s “disablist” and “defamatory” coverage of the government’s push to force people off incapacity benefits.

More than 70 people – including members of Disabled People Against Cuts, the Autistic Rights Movement and the Mental Health Resistance Network – protested outside the paper’s central London headquarters.

The action was part of a day of protests across the country, including demonstrations outside offices belonging to Atos Healthcare, which carries out medical assessments on claimants of disability benefits.

A series of Daily Mail articles about benefits claimants have angered disabled people since the coalition government came to power.

They say the stories and their “lurid” and “sensationalist” headlines – such as “76 % of those who say they’re sick ‘can work’” – label disabled people as cheats and scroungers and fuel hate crime.

One protester, Eleanor Lisney, from Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), said: “What they are doing is dangerous and it just encourages disability hate crime, because people that read the Daily Mail will think disabled people are shamming it and are just benefits scroungers.”

Another protester, Dave Skull, an activist with Mad Pride, said the Mail was “smearing all claimants as being criminals”, and added: “What they are doing is slanderous. It’s lies.”

Linda Burnip, from DPAC, said: “The lies and half truths that the Daily Mail has published have resulted in an increase of hate crime attacks against disabled people.

“We are not prepared to sit back and allow them to continue to peddle their disgusting disablist propaganda unchallenged.”

The Mail declined to comment on the protest, which came as the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) revealed that two articles in the paper had been found not to have breached its “Editor’s Code”.

A Mail news story, on 26 January, accused hundreds of thousands of disabled people of “trying it on” in a bid to secure disability benefits.

A column on the same day – with a headline stating “400,000 benefits cheats show scale of workshy Britain” – referred to unsuccessful claimants as “scroungers” who were “on the fiddle” and “defrauding the system”.

Campaigners had lodged complaints about the articles with the PCC on the grounds of accuracy, harassment and discrimination.

But the PCC said it “took the view that the newspaper was entitled to take the editorial stance that certain claimants ‘were trying it on’”.

14 April 2011

Share this post:

Share on X (Twitter)Share on FacebookShare on WhatsAppShare on RedditShare on LinkedIn
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Related

‘Muddled’ blue badge reforms ‘are to blame for renewal delays’
6th February 2015
UN debate will be reminder of true inclusive education
6th February 2015
IDS breaks pledge on PIP waiting-times, as tens of thousands still queue for months
30th January 2015

Primary Sidebar

On the left of the image are multiple heads of different colours - white, aqua, red, light brown, and dark green - all grouped together, then the words ‘Campaign for Disability Justice. Sign up to support. #OpportunitySecurityRespect’
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Access

Latest Stories

Disabled MP who quit government over benefit cuts tells DNS: ‘The consequences will be devastating’

Disabled peers plan to ‘amend, amend, amend, amend, amend’ after assisted dying bill reaches Lords

Minister finally admits that working-age benefits spending is stable, despite months of ‘spiralling’ claims

This bill opens the door to scandal, abuse and injustice, disabled activists say after assisted dying bill vote

Timms says cuts must go ahead, despite being reminded of risk that disabled claimants could die

Absence of disabled people’s voices from assisted dying bill has been ‘astonishing’, says disabled MP

Timms misleads MPs on DWP transparency and cover-ups, as he gives evidence on PIP review

Ministers are considering further extension to disability hate crime laws, after pledge on ‘aggravated’ offences

Making all self-driving pilot schemes accessible would be ‘counter-productive’ and slow us down, says minister

Involve disabled people ‘meaningfully’ from the start when developing digital assistive tech, says report

Advice and Information

Readspeaker
A photograph shows an audience raising their hands in a BSL sign. The words say: 'BSL Conference 2025. The future starts with us. Leeds 17-18 July. Be part of shaping the future of Deaf cultures and identities. Get 10% off with BDA10'

Footer

The International Standard Serial Number for Disability News Service is: ISSN 2398-8924

  • Accessibility Statement
  • Privacy Policy
  • Site map
  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Threads
  • Twitter

Copyright © 2025 Disability News Service

Site development by A Bright Clear Web