Stigma or Empowerment? What Do Disabled People Say About Their Representation In News and Entertainment Media?
Main Article Content
Keywords
news, entertainment TV, film
Abstract
This paper asked people who identify themselves as disabled to evaluate the American media’s presentation of disability. Disabled people internationally took an online survey on media representations. Respondents (N=390) say much of the American film, TV, and news representations of disabled people are problematic and disempowering.
References
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Barnes, C. (1992). Disabling imagery and the media: An exploration of the principles for media representations of disabled people. Halifax, NS, Canada: Ryburn.
Barnes, C. (2003, Sept.). Disability studies: what’s the point? Theory, Policy and Practice Conference. Conducted at the University of Lancaster. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/Barnes/What's%20the%20point.pdf.
Biklen, D. (1987). Framed: Print journalism's treatment of disability issues In A. Gartner and T. Joe (Eds.), Images of the Disabled, Disabling Images. New York: Praeger 82.
BBC Ouch! (2005). The Greatest Disabled TV Character. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/.
Chivers, S. & Markotic, N. (2010). The Problem Body: Projecting Disability on Film. Ohio State University Press.
Clogston, J. S. (1989). A theoretical framework for studying media portrayal of persons with disabilities. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Washington, D.C. (August 1989)
Clogston, J. S. (1990). Disability coverage in 16 newspapers. Louisville: Advocado Press.
Covington, G. (1988). The stereotypes, the myths and the media. Washington, D.C., The News Media and Disability Issues. Washington, D.C.: National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. 1-2.
Crupi, A. (2006, April 24). TLC gives Little People 2nd run. Mediaweek. http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002384654.
Davis, L. (2009). Let actors with disabilities play characters with disabilities. The Huffington Post, December 7. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lennard-davis/let-actors-with-disabilit_b_380266.html.
Dean, L. (2010). Riverside actress with Down syndrome returns in new season of 'Glee.' The Press-Enterprise, Sept. 21. http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_D_glee21.1fc3ea4.html.
Dillon, C., Byrd, K., and Byrd, D. (1980). Television and disability, October-November-December, Journal of Rehabilitation: 67-69.Down Syndrome Daily. (2011, May 10). Aimee Richardson stars as Punky in a new cartoon. http://www.downsyndromedaily.com/2011/05/amiee-richardson-stars-as-punky-in-new.html
Duckett, J. (1993, Nov. 21). Girl in wheelchair joins `Sesame Street.' The Morning Call.
Enns, A. & Smit, C. (2001). Screening disability: Essays on cinema and disability. D.C: University Press of America.
Garland‐Thomson, R. (1997). Theorizing disability. In Extraordinary bodies: Figuring physical disability in American culture and literature (pp. 19-54). New York: Columbia University Press.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2002). The politics of staring: Visual rhetorics of disability in popular photography. In S. Snyder, B. Brueggemann & R. Garland-Thomson (Eds.), Disability studies: Enabling the humanities (pp. 56-75). New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2011). Integrating disability, transforming feminist theory. In K. Hall, (Ed.), Feminist disability studies (pp.13 – 47). Indiana University Press: Bloomington, Indiana.
Gilman, G. (2013, May 20). Hollywood’s Disabled Actors Protest NBC’s ‘Ironside’ Casting –When Is It Their Turn? The Wrap. http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/hollywoods-disabled-react-ironside-casting-all-we-want-chance-91886.
Hahn, H. D. & Belt, T.L. (2004). Disability identity and attitudes toward cure in a sample of disabled activists. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 45, No. 4: 453-464.
Haller, B. (1995). Disability rights on the public agenda: News coverage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Unpublished doctoral dissertation at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa.
Haller, B. (1999). How the News Frames Disability: Print Media Coverage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Research in Social Science and Disability. JAI Press, Vol. 1.
Haller, B. (2003). Major news media coverage of disability topics: A comparative study, 1998, 2002. A final report for the Center for an Accessible Society. San Diego: Center for an Accessible Society. Part of Grant No. H133A980045 from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.
Haller, B. (2010). Representing disability in an ableist world: Essays on mass media. Louisville, Ky.: Advocado Press.
Hardin, B., Hardin, M., Lynn, S. & Walsdorf, K. (2001). Missing in action? Images of disability in sports illustrated for kids. Disability Studies Quarterly, (21)2. http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/277/303
Hunt, P. (1991). Discrimination: Disabled people and the media. Contact, No. 70: 45-48.
I AM PWD. (2010, Sept. 29). New study reveals lack of characters with disabilities on television. Press release, Sept. 29. http://www.iampwd.org/new-study-reveals-lack-characters-disabilities-television.
Johnson. M. (2003). Make them go away. Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve & the case against disability rights. Louisville, Ky.: Advocado Press.
Kennedy, D. (2006). Will Little People, Big World change our perception of dwarfs? Slate, March 4. http://www.slate.com/id/2138626/.
Lee, F. (2006). Documenting a family that comes in two sizes. New York Times, March 2: E1.
Longmore, P. K. (1987). Screening stereotypes: Images of disabled people in television and motion pictures,” in A. Gartner and T. Joe (Eds.), Images of the Disabled, Disabling Images, New York: Praeger: 65-78.
Louis Harris and Associates, Inc. (1991). Public attitudes toward people with disabilities. New York: National Organization on Disability.
Mallett, R. (2007, May). Hey Timmy, How many able-bodied people does it take to screw in a light bulb? : The troublesome subversion of disability stereotypes. Paper presented at the Cultural Disability Studies Research Network Conference. www.cdsrn.org.uk/Mallett_2_CDSRN_2007.ppt.
Miller, L. (1995). The supercrip syndrome: A look at attitudes behind disability newsworthiness. Unpublished manuscript. March 21.
Miller, P. (1993). The impact of assisted suicide on persons with disabilities - Is it a right without freedom? Issues in Law & Medicine, 9:1: 47-62.
Mitchell, L. R. (1989). Beyond the Supercrip syndrome, Quill, 18-23.
Montgomery, K. C. (1989). Targeting prime time. New York: Oxford University Press.
National Organization on Disability. (2010, July 26). Harris interactive survey finds gaps still remain between Americans with and without disabilities, NOD News, http://www.nod.org/news/harris_interactive_survey_finds_gaps_still_remain_between_americans_with_an/www.2010DisabilitySurveys.org.
Nelson, J. (1994). The disabled, the media, and the information age. Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Nelson, J. (2011). Invisible no longer: Images of disability in the media. In P. M. Lester (Ed.), Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media (3rd ed.). Santa Barbara, CA USA: 274-291.
Norden, M. (1995). The cinema of isolation. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Norden, M. F. (2001). The Hollywood discourse on disability: Some personal reflections. In Anthony Enns & Chris Smit, Screening Disability: Essays on Cinema and Disability. D.C: University Press of America.
Makas, E. (1993). Changing channels: The portrayal of people with disabilities on television. In G. L. Berry and J.K. Asamen (Eds.) Children and Television. Newbury Park, Ca.: Sage.
Motion Picture Association of America. (2011). Theatrical market statistics. http://www.mpaa.org/resources/5bec4ac9-a95e-443b-987b-bff6fb5455a9.pdf.
The Numbers. (2010). Movie Index – 1988. http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/index1988.php.
Olien, C., Tichenor, P., & Donohue, G. (1989). Media and protest. In Larissa Grunig (Ed.), Monographs in environmental education and environmental studies. Troy, Ohio: North American Association for Environmental Education.
Pakman, A. (2008). Media consumption and people with disabilities. Unpublished paper, Columbia University MBA program, New York, NY.
Powley, K. (2012, March18). Agency to create disabled TV stars. New Zealand Herald. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10792766
Sancho, J. (2003). Disabling prejudice: Attitudes towards disability and its portrayal on television. British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting Standards Commission and Independent Television Commission. Retrieved from http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/bsc/pdfs/research/disability.pdf
Shakespeare, T. (1999). Art and lies? Representations of disability on film. In M. Corker. and S, French. (eds.) Disability Discourse. Buckingham: Open University Press: 164-172
Shannon, J. (2005 November). Krazy kripples: South Park & disability. New Mobility,
http://newmobility.com/articleViewIE.cfm?id=1075#.
Shapiro, J. (1993). Disability policy and the media: A stealth civil rights movement bypasses the press and defies conventional wisdom. In Sara Watson and David Pfeiffer (Eds.) Disability Policy As An Emerging Field of Mainstream Public Policy Research and Pedagogy, a symposium edition of the Policy Studies Journal.
Shapiro, J. (1994). No Pity. People with disabilities forging a new civil rights movement. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.
Siebers, T. (2008). Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Special Olympics. (2003). Multinational study of attitudes toward individuals with intellectual disabilities. Washington, D.C.: Special Olympics.
Titchkosky. T. (2008). Reading and writing disability differently: The textured life of Embodiment. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Wahl, O. F. (1995). Media Madness, Public Images of Mental Illness. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Wendell, S. (1996). The rejected body: Feminist philosophical reflections on disability. London: Routledge.
Whittington-Walsh, F. (2002). From freaks to savants: Disability and hegemony from ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ (1939) to ‘Sling Blade’ (1997). Disability & Society. 17(6): 695-707.
Wilde, A. (2007). Are you sitting comfortably? Soap operas, disability and audience. Dis: cover! http://york.academia.edu/AlisonWilde/Papers/341490/Are_You_Sitting_Comfortably_Soap_Operas_Disability_and_Audience
Wilde, A. (2010). Spectacle, Performance, and the Re-Presentation of Disability and Impairment. Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal. Volume 6, Issue 3.
Barnes, C. (1992). Disabling imagery and the media: An exploration of the principles for media representations of disabled people. Halifax, NS, Canada: Ryburn.
Barnes, C. (2003, Sept.). Disability studies: what’s the point? Theory, Policy and Practice Conference. Conducted at the University of Lancaster. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/Barnes/What's%20the%20point.pdf.
Biklen, D. (1987). Framed: Print journalism's treatment of disability issues In A. Gartner and T. Joe (Eds.), Images of the Disabled, Disabling Images. New York: Praeger 82.
BBC Ouch! (2005). The Greatest Disabled TV Character. http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/.
Chivers, S. & Markotic, N. (2010). The Problem Body: Projecting Disability on Film. Ohio State University Press.
Clogston, J. S. (1989). A theoretical framework for studying media portrayal of persons with disabilities. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Washington, D.C. (August 1989)
Clogston, J. S. (1990). Disability coverage in 16 newspapers. Louisville: Advocado Press.
Covington, G. (1988). The stereotypes, the myths and the media. Washington, D.C., The News Media and Disability Issues. Washington, D.C.: National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research. 1-2.
Crupi, A. (2006, April 24). TLC gives Little People 2nd run. Mediaweek. http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/recent_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002384654.
Davis, L. (2009). Let actors with disabilities play characters with disabilities. The Huffington Post, December 7. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lennard-davis/let-actors-with-disabilit_b_380266.html.
Dean, L. (2010). Riverside actress with Down syndrome returns in new season of 'Glee.' The Press-Enterprise, Sept. 21. http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_D_glee21.1fc3ea4.html.
Dillon, C., Byrd, K., and Byrd, D. (1980). Television and disability, October-November-December, Journal of Rehabilitation: 67-69.Down Syndrome Daily. (2011, May 10). Aimee Richardson stars as Punky in a new cartoon. http://www.downsyndromedaily.com/2011/05/amiee-richardson-stars-as-punky-in-new.html
Duckett, J. (1993, Nov. 21). Girl in wheelchair joins `Sesame Street.' The Morning Call.
Enns, A. & Smit, C. (2001). Screening disability: Essays on cinema and disability. D.C: University Press of America.
Garland‐Thomson, R. (1997). Theorizing disability. In Extraordinary bodies: Figuring physical disability in American culture and literature (pp. 19-54). New York: Columbia University Press.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2002). The politics of staring: Visual rhetorics of disability in popular photography. In S. Snyder, B. Brueggemann & R. Garland-Thomson (Eds.), Disability studies: Enabling the humanities (pp. 56-75). New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2011). Integrating disability, transforming feminist theory. In K. Hall, (Ed.), Feminist disability studies (pp.13 – 47). Indiana University Press: Bloomington, Indiana.
Gilman, G. (2013, May 20). Hollywood’s Disabled Actors Protest NBC’s ‘Ironside’ Casting –When Is It Their Turn? The Wrap. http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/hollywoods-disabled-react-ironside-casting-all-we-want-chance-91886.
Hahn, H. D. & Belt, T.L. (2004). Disability identity and attitudes toward cure in a sample of disabled activists. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 45, No. 4: 453-464.
Haller, B. (1995). Disability rights on the public agenda: News coverage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Unpublished doctoral dissertation at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa.
Haller, B. (1999). How the News Frames Disability: Print Media Coverage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Research in Social Science and Disability. JAI Press, Vol. 1.
Haller, B. (2003). Major news media coverage of disability topics: A comparative study, 1998, 2002. A final report for the Center for an Accessible Society. San Diego: Center for an Accessible Society. Part of Grant No. H133A980045 from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.
Haller, B. (2010). Representing disability in an ableist world: Essays on mass media. Louisville, Ky.: Advocado Press.
Hardin, B., Hardin, M., Lynn, S. & Walsdorf, K. (2001). Missing in action? Images of disability in sports illustrated for kids. Disability Studies Quarterly, (21)2. http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/277/303
Hunt, P. (1991). Discrimination: Disabled people and the media. Contact, No. 70: 45-48.
I AM PWD. (2010, Sept. 29). New study reveals lack of characters with disabilities on television. Press release, Sept. 29. http://www.iampwd.org/new-study-reveals-lack-characters-disabilities-television.
Johnson. M. (2003). Make them go away. Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve & the case against disability rights. Louisville, Ky.: Advocado Press.
Kennedy, D. (2006). Will Little People, Big World change our perception of dwarfs? Slate, March 4. http://www.slate.com/id/2138626/.
Lee, F. (2006). Documenting a family that comes in two sizes. New York Times, March 2: E1.
Longmore, P. K. (1987). Screening stereotypes: Images of disabled people in television and motion pictures,” in A. Gartner and T. Joe (Eds.), Images of the Disabled, Disabling Images, New York: Praeger: 65-78.
Louis Harris and Associates, Inc. (1991). Public attitudes toward people with disabilities. New York: National Organization on Disability.
Mallett, R. (2007, May). Hey Timmy, How many able-bodied people does it take to screw in a light bulb? : The troublesome subversion of disability stereotypes. Paper presented at the Cultural Disability Studies Research Network Conference. www.cdsrn.org.uk/Mallett_2_CDSRN_2007.ppt.
Miller, L. (1995). The supercrip syndrome: A look at attitudes behind disability newsworthiness. Unpublished manuscript. March 21.
Miller, P. (1993). The impact of assisted suicide on persons with disabilities - Is it a right without freedom? Issues in Law & Medicine, 9:1: 47-62.
Mitchell, L. R. (1989). Beyond the Supercrip syndrome, Quill, 18-23.
Montgomery, K. C. (1989). Targeting prime time. New York: Oxford University Press.
National Organization on Disability. (2010, July 26). Harris interactive survey finds gaps still remain between Americans with and without disabilities, NOD News, http://www.nod.org/news/harris_interactive_survey_finds_gaps_still_remain_between_americans_with_an/www.2010DisabilitySurveys.org.
Nelson, J. (1994). The disabled, the media, and the information age. Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group.
Nelson, J. (2011). Invisible no longer: Images of disability in the media. In P. M. Lester (Ed.), Images That Injure: Pictorial Stereotypes in the Media (3rd ed.). Santa Barbara, CA USA: 274-291.
Norden, M. (1995). The cinema of isolation. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Norden, M. F. (2001). The Hollywood discourse on disability: Some personal reflections. In Anthony Enns & Chris Smit, Screening Disability: Essays on Cinema and Disability. D.C: University Press of America.
Makas, E. (1993). Changing channels: The portrayal of people with disabilities on television. In G. L. Berry and J.K. Asamen (Eds.) Children and Television. Newbury Park, Ca.: Sage.
Motion Picture Association of America. (2011). Theatrical market statistics. http://www.mpaa.org/resources/5bec4ac9-a95e-443b-987b-bff6fb5455a9.pdf.
The Numbers. (2010). Movie Index – 1988. http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/index1988.php.
Olien, C., Tichenor, P., & Donohue, G. (1989). Media and protest. In Larissa Grunig (Ed.), Monographs in environmental education and environmental studies. Troy, Ohio: North American Association for Environmental Education.
Pakman, A. (2008). Media consumption and people with disabilities. Unpublished paper, Columbia University MBA program, New York, NY.
Powley, K. (2012, March18). Agency to create disabled TV stars. New Zealand Herald. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10792766
Sancho, J. (2003). Disabling prejudice: Attitudes towards disability and its portrayal on television. British Broadcasting Corporation, Broadcasting Standards Commission and Independent Television Commission. Retrieved from http://www.ofcom.org.uk/static/archive/bsc/pdfs/research/disability.pdf
Shakespeare, T. (1999). Art and lies? Representations of disability on film. In M. Corker. and S, French. (eds.) Disability Discourse. Buckingham: Open University Press: 164-172
Shannon, J. (2005 November). Krazy kripples: South Park & disability. New Mobility,
http://newmobility.com/articleViewIE.cfm?id=1075#.
Shapiro, J. (1993). Disability policy and the media: A stealth civil rights movement bypasses the press and defies conventional wisdom. In Sara Watson and David Pfeiffer (Eds.) Disability Policy As An Emerging Field of Mainstream Public Policy Research and Pedagogy, a symposium edition of the Policy Studies Journal.
Shapiro, J. (1994). No Pity. People with disabilities forging a new civil rights movement. New York, NY: Three Rivers Press.
Siebers, T. (2008). Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Special Olympics. (2003). Multinational study of attitudes toward individuals with intellectual disabilities. Washington, D.C.: Special Olympics.
Titchkosky. T. (2008). Reading and writing disability differently: The textured life of Embodiment. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Wahl, O. F. (1995). Media Madness, Public Images of Mental Illness. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Wendell, S. (1996). The rejected body: Feminist philosophical reflections on disability. London: Routledge.
Whittington-Walsh, F. (2002). From freaks to savants: Disability and hegemony from ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ (1939) to ‘Sling Blade’ (1997). Disability & Society. 17(6): 695-707.
Wilde, A. (2007). Are you sitting comfortably? Soap operas, disability and audience. Dis: cover! http://york.academia.edu/AlisonWilde/Papers/341490/Are_You_Sitting_Comfortably_Soap_Operas_Disability_and_Audience
Wilde, A. (2010). Spectacle, Performance, and the Re-Presentation of Disability and Impairment. Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal. Volume 6, Issue 3.
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Aug 22, 2014
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Author Biographies
Beth Haller, Towson University
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is a professor of mass communication at Towson University in Maryland. She has been researching media images of people with disabilities for more than 20 years and is the author of Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media (Advocado Press, 2010).
Lingling Zhang, Towson University
Lingling Zhang, Ph.D., is assistant professor of mass communication in Maryland. Her research focuses on cognitive processing of narratives and socio-cultural and psychological effects of media messages.