1/8/26 - Journalism, the film industry, and the death penalty

Hi there!

Kind of a hodgepodge today. I hope some of it is useful and engaging. All three held my attention.

Don't forget to click the button below to get to the 2026 Disability Thinking Weekday poll, if you haven't done so already:

Disabled-led media will shape the future of journalism

Priti Salian, Reframing Disability - December 26, 2025

"When disabled journalists are part of the newsroom, they bring lived experience that shapes reporting and design. We spot barriers others miss such as graphics without alt text, breaking news streams without captions, or language that alienates. Our presence ensures disability is covered as a social, political and economic issue, not just a human-interest sidebar."

Reframing Disability is a newsletter focused on disability in journalism and other content creation and politically-adjacent fields. This issue features two disabled journalists – one from the UK and one from the US – discussing the future of disabled people and disability work in journalism. There's a lot going on, and it's pretty exciting.

Accessible sets aren’t ‘a luxury.’ A new film starring ‘Wicked’s’ Marissa Bode shows the way

Manuel Betancourt, Los Angeles Time - November 20, 2025

"'Honestly, even prior to ‘Wicked,’ the No. 1 question I’m always asking when I’m collaborating with somebody is, ‘Have you worked with disabled people before? If not, how are you accommodating for that?’' Bode says. “Even when I signed on to my agency — or even my PR team, or even my manager — that was one of the first questions I asked. That’s always at the top of my mind.'"

This piece is about accessibility, equal opportunity, and disability representation in the film industry. And that's interesting and worth reading for its own sake. But I can't help thinking that Marissa Bode's question, quoted above, could work for disabled people starting any new working relationship. Having recently spent several weeks in the hospital, I can think of a few situations where it would have been useful and maybe reassuring to ask a doctor or nurse about their past experience treating disabled people, and how they have adapted to that experience. And since I'm long overdue for a haircut, that's something I should probably remember to ask my next barber.

When Is it Okay to Kill the Disabled?

Mike Ervin, The Progressive - January 2, 2026

"Killing people who are disabled seems to me like a textbook example of “cruel and unusual punishments” that the Eighth Amendment is designed to prevent. But if the Eighth Amendment doesn’t protect people with intellectual disabilities from being executed by the state, as Alabama claims, then who does it protect?"

How the death penalty is applied to people with disabilities is one of those disability issues with a fascinating, intellectual side and a very human, terrifying, and tragic side. The horrible side is pretty obvious. We're talking about the worst possible civic punishment potentially applied to people with diminished capacity to understand it. And of course we are also talking about pretty terrible crimes in which someone else was most likely killed in some horrible way. But on the more intellectual side the arguments are worth debating, even if doing so can seem a bit cold. If we widen the scope of who should be considered to not be responsible for their actions for the purpose of the death penalty, what are the implications for disabled people's agency and freedom in other matters? Do we say it's more "cruel and unusual" to punish disabled people than non-disabled people, and if so, why? How "special" are disabled people in that way? Or, is this really more about the broader impact of applying narrower standards for who is and isn't disabled, as this article suggests? It's interesting. And it's horrific.

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