Nov
01
2012

'Inspiration' or Invisible

Media offer limited roles for people with disabilities

2012 Paralympics Torch Relay--Photo Credit: James Mitchell/Wikimedia Commons

U.S. media had a soft spot for the 2012 Paralympic Games, featuring some 4,000 athletes with disabilities from around the world. Not that they thought people wanted to see much of them―NBC only aired a few hours’ worth, and no live coverage (AP, 8/23/12)―but the events “proved once again that whatever your obstacles, you really can accomplish almost anything with hard work and dedication” (Sacramento Bee, 9/14/12). Seeing people with, as NPR’s Melissa Block (8/28/12) put it, “all sorts of impairments” competing in events from archery to swimming was “inspiring a lot of people” (NBC, 9/4/12); these were “performances that [...]

Dec
01
2011

Lives Worth Reporting in the Disability Rights Movement

A history still unfolding—and largely unheeded

Lives Worth Living, an independent documentary on the U.S. disability rights movement that aired recently on PBS, traces the emergence and growth of activism through the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act—a fact noted in a respectful New York Times review (10/26/11) that was all the notice big media appeared to take of the film, billed as the first such treatment of this crucial social justice movement. The Times’ Neil Genzlinger noted in closing that the “impact” of the ADA, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in employment, public accommodations, commercial facilities, transportation, and telecommunications, is [...]

Jul
01
2011

Getting Arrested Without Getting Attention

Media ignore disability rights protest on Capitol Hill

While it’s true elite media show no principled interest in citizen activism, you’d think some things would garner a word or two. Like 300 people, 200 or so in wheelchairs, occupying the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C., to protest Republican budget plans for Medicaid. Dozens of protesters, organized by the disability rights group ADAPT, were arrested and carted off by Capitol police on May 2; the next day, another 300 gathered outside the Longworth House Office Building, many getting inside to Rep. Paul Ryan’s second floor office, where 10 were arrested—all to the profound disinterest [...]

Aug
01
2005

Does Size Really Matter?

Analyzing the press’s protest coverage

On March 19, the two-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, tens of thousands of people across the country, and still more worldwide, turned out to protest the ongoing war. The protests had multiple goals, but given the general numbing of the population to the war, one objective was undoubtedly to keep the fact that human beings are being killed on a daily basis in the forefront of the average American’s brain. Unfortunately, if coverage in leading newspaper and television outlets is any gauge, this goal remains largely unmet. The New York Times (3/20/05) teased its coverage on the front [...]

Mar
04
2005

John Hockenberry on Million Dollar Baby, Dahr Jamail on Iraq

Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Sure, Million Dollar Baby is just a movie, but given how rarely the media spotlight ever makes it around to people with disabilities, the movie is bound to shape public opinion and understanding. So the questions provoked by the film would seem to deserve more thoughtful, and inclusive, journalistic treatment than they’ve thus far received. We'll talk about media coverage of the controversial Oscar winning film and its ostensible message with NBC correspondent John Hockenberry, author also of "Moving Violations: War Zones, Wheelchairs, and Declarations of Independence." Also on the show: The average US [...]

Nov
01
2000

A Right, Not a Favor

Coverage of Disability Act misses historical shift

Despite some limitations, the 10-year-old Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is an historic call for an end to barriers facing this country’s 50 million disabled people in nearly every arena of life. But major news outlets present the ADA as mainly a regulatory issue affecting private businesses, rather than a human rights issue facing society as a whole. There are articles celebrating advances like curb cuts and wheelchair-accessible buildings. But the Act’s “costs” to business are a constant in news coverage, along with a pronounced subcurrent of concerns about purported “abuse” of the law and out-of-control litigiousness: Driving up insurance [...]

May
01
1995

Are Disabled Children Ripping You Off--Or Did PrimeTime Live Tell a Big Fib?

Few targets of the "welfare reform" campaign are more vulnerable than disabled children. Yet funds for those children, in the form of the Supplemental Security Income program, were under attack on PrimeTime Live's Oct. 13, 1994 broadcast. "It's a program designed to help disabled children, but parents are helping themselves," ABC's Diane Sawyer announced. "Chief correspondent Chris Wallace discovers all you need is a child willing to tell a big fib." Co-anchor Sam Donaldson echoed her: "Chief correspondent Chris Wallace discovered just how easy it is to get on the receiving end of what some are calling 'crazy checks.'" Wallace [...]

Jul
01
1991

Media Miss the Disability Rights Issue

"Courageous Cripples" Instead of Access Activists

Two thousand people gathered on the South Lawn of the White House on July 26, 1990, for the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was the largest gathering ever of journalists for a disability story, most of whose reporting ignored the fact pointed out by a lonely Associated Press dispatch a few days earlier: that the White House itself lacks the accessible restrooms mandated by the act. Instead, most of the stories had the "gee whiz" tone common to articles on not readily understood issues: "In a ceremony attended by the deaf and blind, paraplegics and a woman [...]


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