Perception of disabled people's organisations on the media's treatment of disabled people in news spaces

Abstract

The media's treatment of people with disabilities is an important issue for their associative movement, which seeks the inclusion and active participation of people with disabilities in all areas of society. Although progress has been made in the way in which the media report on disability, there is still concern in the group about the type of news and the frameworks from which they are approached. The qualitative methodology of the study is the semi-structured interview with federations and confederations associated with the Spanish Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities (Cermi). The results point to the persistence of paternalistic or empowering perspectives that distance the image portrayed from the reality of the collective. Discrepancies are observed between the cases of blind people or people with Down syndrome, with a more accurate representation, and people with psychosocial disabilities, who are still stigmatized. The organizations put the focus on improving the training and specialization of professionals, as well as on collaborating with the associative movement to improve the media treatment of disability. It is concluded that the media space dedicated to them is still insufficient, stereotyped and unequal between the different types of disability.