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By María Teresa Aveggio, Programme Manager, WACC
| | Commitment to fair and just representation for all sectors of society has long been part of WACC’s communication vision. As such WACC has supported a number of practical initiatives aimed at changing the way disability is portrayed.
In 1998 the quarterly journal Media Development (2/1998) brought together a number of articles on the many and varied issues related to communications and disabilities – questions of representation, of employment in the media industries, the need for universal design and for recognition and acceptance of difference, not sameness as a central, universal norm. |
Three years later WACC commissioned research in India and published the findings in the form of a booklet “Disability and the Media in India: A Study”. And in the area of projects, WACC has provided support for activities in Brazil, Bolivia, and Lebanon.
In October 2009, a Brazilian partner of WACC the group Minuto de Inclução (http://www.mid.org.br/) – a communications and advocacy group campaigning for the communication rights of disabled people – organized the international seminar “Disabled People, Invisibility and Emergence” held in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 27-29 October.
Different media portrayals of disability were discussed by disabled people, journalists and communication experts during the three-day seminar. At the opening conference, Julia Hoffman (University of Amsterdam) affirmed that, historically, disabled people are portrayed in the media in a stereotyped way. On the one hand they are presented as an inferior kind of people who will never be successful on their own merits and which will always need to be supervised by others. On the other hand they are represented as people with almost heroic attributes.
Regina Atalla, president of the Latin American Network of NGOs of Disabled People and their Families (RIADIS), stated that the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disability (2008), which received considerable input from civil society, provides a more consolidated image of a disabled person as “a complex human being which is not summed up by her or his deficiency”.
Tuca Munhoz, organizer of the event and president of the MID Institute, opened up the debate during a round table by criticizing a continent-wide TV campaign which fundraises for rehabilitation centres in Latin America. Teleton, Munhoz said is built upon the commiseration of people and the “exhibition” of children with disabilities.
Marcos Perez, a Sportv journalist, also considers this approach to the issue as problematic. When I cover the Para Olympics, he stated, I show disabled people who have achieved success. Others concentrate more on covering the accidents and suffering of disabled people.
For Frei Carlos Josaphat (University of Friburgo, Sweden), the shortcomings of media coverage are inherent in the mass media which are only interested “in appearances, celebrities, and not in the human being, her/ his dignity and values”.
Responsibility for the lack of appropriate coverage is divided between government, mass media and civil society according to Veet Vivarta, director of ANDI, the News Agency of the Child. And for Bolivian communicator José Luis Aguirre, the main problem is journalists’ insensitivity to diversity. Aguirre is director of SECRAD, the Servicio de Capacitación en Radio y Television of the Universidad San Pablo in Bolivia, which trains radio and TV professionals and is responsible for the production and publication of the “Guide to Inclusive Communication” (http://www.waccglobal.org/images/stories/website/programme/communication_rights/gua%20discapacidad%202008%202.pdf ).
Lack of appropriate sources of information was also cited as contributing to distorted and unfair media coverage in which disabled people are portrayed as victims rather than as full citizens with rights.
This discriminatory way of representing a large sector of the population is not exclusive to the news media. In films and TV dramas it has been the norm for disabled roles to be played by non-disabled actors. A report in the English newspaper The Observer (15.11.09) indicates that in the United Kingdom the mother of Lizzy Clark, the first actress with Asperger’s syndrome to play a fictional character with the condition, has launched a campaign to stop actors “playing disabled”.
According to Nicola Clark, having non disabled actors playing characters with a disability is “the blacking-up of the 21st century. We need to break down these barriers. They are unacceptable and indefensible in a modern-day society...” Just like in the news media, stereotypical coverage and representation feed and reproduce prejudices and ignorance.
The audiovisual industries also contribute to strengthening existing stereotypes about disabled people. “When non-disabled people try to portray us,” said Lizzy Clark, “they tend to fall back on stereotypes that have done our community so much harm in the past”. For the whole article see http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/nov/15/disabled-actors-television-campaign
Also see: http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/persons_with_disabilities/index.cfm
For more information contact: Tuca Munhoz, MID Institute
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