Young disabled people join CNN news team for work experience opportunity

Disabled people wanting to pursue a career in television news have been offered the chance to work behind the scenes at international broadcaster CNN, to gain some valuable media experience.

Zubee Kibria, a young person with cerebral palsy, has spent six months being part of disability charity Leonard Cheshire Disability’s Can Do Volunteering programme, which aims to support young disabled people have new experiences and promote their independence.

The job shadowing role is being run by the disability charity’s programme in order to help more young disabled people gain experience into the hard to break into field of television news.

Through her participation in Can Do Volunteering, Ms Kibria was able to spend one week job shadowing at CNN, a division of global broadcasters Turner Broadcasting.

She said: “In my experience, it has been very difficult to find a job. However, if you wish to pursue a career in the media, job shadowing is a great way to get your foot in the door and experience what happens behind the scenes of a newsroom, like CNN. I hope this encourages other media outlets to offer opportunities like this for disabled people.”

During Ms Kibria’s week shadowing it was announced Nelson Mandela had passed away and she played an active role contributing to CNN’s research and broadcast coverage of the story.

Ms Kibria shadowed interns and representatives from five different departments and gained first-hand knowledge about how a news room is run, as well as the complexities of live broadcasting.

Natalie Varney, corporate officer at Leonard Cheshire Disability, said: “We are delighted to be working with Turner Broadcasting to offer young disabled people the opportunity to get some valuable experience in television news, which can be a difficult field to break into. We hope that more disabled people will take up this opportunity.”

Nick Hart, head of CSR for Turner Broadcasting Europe said: “This company owes its success to the fact that its channels appeal to every section of society and part of the way that we have achieved this is by having staff as diverse as our audiences. That’s what we mean by Turner For All and this philosophy runs throughout the company and on our channels from CNN to Cartoon Network.”