General News Report: the Media Normalizes the Murders of People with Disabilities

KaySee · Sep 2, 2018

New Report Discovers That the Media Normalizes the Murders of People with Disabilities | By Annamarya Scaccia | March 14, 2017

“It really goes back to the misunderstanding about disability—that disability is this horrendous life experience nobody wants to have,” said Vilissa Thompson, a licensed master social worker and founder of Ramp Your Voice!, a disability rights consultation and advocacy organization. “When you have these stories of ‘mercy killing’ and the way they’re portrayed, it expounds on the ableism and the inaccurate understanding further.”

Over the last few months, David M. Perry, a disability rights journalist and media critic, poured over 200 media reports of filicide involving disabled victims from 2011 to 2015. What Perry found was that reporters rarely questioned the “hardship” defense; instead, they would typically paint the murderer as an “overwhelmed by loving” parent or caregiver. Furthermore, Perry discovered that, among the media reports from 2015, not one journalist reached out to a person with a disability or a disability advocate for a statement.
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General News Report: the Media Normalizes the Murders of People with Disabilities

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