News outlets like The Daily Telegraph should get their facts right before they launch baseless and discriminating attacks on people with disabilities, writes Frank Quinlan.

The Daily Telegraph is a tabloid. Everyone knows that, and most people lower their expectations when leafing through its mostly advertisement-filled pages. But does this excuse poor journalism? Indeed, does it provide them with an excuse to simply make it up?

The country is abuzz about the Tele's front page story yesterday. It was a crass attack on people on the Disability Support Pension (DSP), based on hearsay and conjecture and not a lot of evidence outside a list of large and largely misrepresented figures.

Most bizarrely, the story compared our country's war veterans to recipients of the pension, suggesting a negative comparison between these proven heroes and the dross on the DSP.

Ironically, some of those so called DSP 'slackers' would be veterans themselves, perhaps with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, for example.

In reality, the front page of the Daily Telegraph yesterday did a large number of Australians, who are battling every day with a serious mental illness or who care for somebody with a serious mental illness, a tremendous disservice.

How terribly disheartening for those people to read that they're somehow less entitled to the support, somehow less entitled to the respect of the community, than people with disabilities that are more immediately obvious or visible.

Australia is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of People with a Disability, which makes it clear that discrimination against people on the basis of disability type is unacceptable. It's a shame that these same standards of decency don't apply to Australia's tabloid media.

What are the facts? What is the truth regarding the 'slackers' on the DSP?

To begin with, the Tele has given no consideration to changes to welfare, especially around 2005, that greatly affected the relative proportions of people accessing DSP versus Newstart.

To say that the numbers of people on DSP for psychiatric disability have exploded ignores the fact that many of those people were previously on Newstart, but were forced to apply for a DSP, thereby essentially removing themselves from the workforce indefinitely.

They were forced to apply for this payment because their disabilities prevented them from meeting the strict participation requirements that apply to Newstart recipients.

For many, the only option was to apply for the DSP, even if they wanted to work.

It is also true that some people moved the other way from DSP onto Newstart as they were reassessed due to changes to the work capacity test. The proportion of people in Australia's population receiving the DSP has remained steady at between 5 and 5.5 per cent over the past decade.

Contrary to the Tele's ill-informed narrative, accessing the DSP is by no means a straightforward process. Significant checks of medical history, documentary evidence, multiple assessments and consultation with doctors are required.

It's certainly a complex situation, but that should never be an excuse for lazy journalism.

The impact of this sort of reporting is counterproductive to the point the article is making.

There is a problem. Many people with mental illness want to work, and the economy needs them to work. Currently our payments system, our system of employment assistance, and our attitudes towards those who experience mental illness all conspire to make it difficult for people to move off the DSP when they are willing and able to do so.

We need reform - indeed, disability advocates are seeking reform - but we need reform that is based on the facts, not populist mythology.

Unfortunately, the Tele is peddling myths that make it harder for people to achieve their goals of participating more fully in our society, and our economy.

The reality of the experience of severe and persistent mental illness is that it can have a profoundly disabling impact on day-to-day living and social functioning, leaving some Australians requiring ongoing financial assistance despite their eagerness to work independently.

It is incumbent on news outlets like the Daily Telegraph to get their facts right before they launch these kinds of baseless and discriminating attacks. These articles hurt real people, and with no perceivable gain for the economy or the country.

Yesterday we witnessed a step backwards in how we treat the most vulnerable members of our community. And that's the true test of a nation's moral courage.

Frank Quinlan is the CEO of the Mental Health Council of Australia, the peak non-government body representing the mental health sector in Australia. View his full profile here.