Whilst there are some industry codes of practice and guidelines that contain provisions relating to disability, such as the Commercial Television Industry Code of Practice 2010, people with disability are rarely featured in the Australian mass media and if featured, are often portrayed negatively.53. The media negatively portrays people with disability by:54
focusing on the impairment of the individual rather than external disabling barriers;
perpetuating stereotypes; and
using negative images, language and terminology.
In particular, the media regularly depicts persons with psychosocial disability as violent and dangerous despite the fact 80 to 90 percent of persons with psychosocial disability never commit a violent offence.55 An Australian study56 on 12,000 media items relating to psychosocial disability indicated 20 percent of news items used inappropriate language, 14.4 percent were stigmatising, 16.6 percent treated people as similar in personality, nearly one third of headlines were sensationalised and only 6.6 percent of news items contained contact details for readers to get further information on psychosocial disability.
Another study of a major daily newspaper in South Australia into portrayals of people with disability across 29 articles found 13 were negative in tone, 6 were positive, 4 were neutral and 6 were mixed.57 A link between crime and psychosocial disability was also reinforced and there were references to the heroism of particular people with disability.58 The reporting did not emphasis the individual but their disability and accentuated stereotypes of victimisation or disempowerment.59 Further, the articles tended to use phrases with a negative tone such as ‘suffers from’ or ‘confined to a wheelchair’ and the emotive content of disability was regularly highlighted.
