Finding myself in news

By Amanda Morris, The Washington Post

Growing up, I did not have friends who wore hearing aids like me. As a mainstreamed kid — who went to regular public school with hearing people instead of going to a deaf school — my only frame of reference for my experiences was my older brother Brett, who also has hearing loss. We stood out and got lots of questions: “What are those things in your ears?” “Can you hear this?” “How about this?”

I got so used to answering hearing people’s questions about my disability that it never occurred to me that I might have my own. 

After all, I had two wonderful deaf parents who raised me to be proud of who I was. I felt like I was already empowered with all the information I needed. Plus, I could perfectly label a diagram of an inner ear and explain the source of my hearing loss to anyone who asked.

Then, a few years ago, I became the inaugural disability reporting fellow for The New York Times. At first, I focused on trying to represent and showcase a wide variety of stories around disabilities in a way that felt authentic and responsible. When reporting on an issue that impacted people with a specific disability, I always interviewed multiple people with that disability, because I was well aware of the fact that the disabled experience is not monolithic.

I focused on framing articles in ways that did not “otherize” disabled people and never wrote about people with disabilities doing typical activities as if they were somehow extraordinary. I also approached each story from the lens of disability as a medical, social and cultural construct. My coverage examined medical research surrounding specific disabilities, investigated how society failed to accommodate people, and delved into how disability impacted peoples’ identities, communities or experiences.

After my fellowship at The Times, I started a full-time disability beat at The Washington Post. As I delved deeper into covering disability, I began to realize how much I actually don’t know.

One of the first topics I covered for the Post was the rollout of over-the-counter hearing aids, for which I had to interview numerous audiologists. Having visited countless audiologists over the years, I easily honed in on the “right” questions to ask.

When discussing a popular feature in hearing aids — in which the aids filter out and dampen any background noise — I remarked to one source that I hated this feature. I told her that my dislike of the feature was why I had not gotten new hearing aids in a decade. In fact, the last time I tried to get new hearing aids and complained to an audiologist about it, the audiologist accused me of being a “sound junkie.” 

My source paused for a moment before explaining that many manufacturers designed hearing aids with senior citizens in mind. In older people, the ability to focus on a specific sound while in a noisy room (a skill called auditory figure-ground discrimination) worsens. This is why manufacturers include this background noise-dampening feature. I was floored. This information has changed how I plan to approach getting hearing aids in the future and has empowered me to ensure that I get hearing aids that truly fit my needs as a young person with a hearing loss, rather than getting something that was designed for someone who is 30 or 40 years older than me.

This is just one example of many that I have found in the past few years of the information gaps that exist when it comes to disability. The stories on my beat that have done the best are those that fill in those gaps — answering questions that disabled people have about disability or showcasing information and experiences that are often not talked about. 

For example, some of my most popular stories have been about how to navigate conditions like ME/CFS, POTS or long COVID. I’ve written about how people maintain relationship intimacy when they can’t get out of bed, and about a strategy called “pacing” that can help manage crushing fatigue symptoms. In general, there are so many disabled people who feel that they often don’t get satisfactory answers or assistance from medical professionals. By writing more for these audiences, my journalism can offer a true service.

Disability is an exciting beat. It touches virtually every subject area in the newsroom, and there’s no shortage of stories to write. But, to truly make the work meaningful, my advice is to look for the gaps. Start asking different questions — ones for which disabled people don’t already know the answers.