Confronting obstacles to inclusion: how the US news media report disability

The news media act as a major source of information about the society in which we live. Much research has confirmed the place of news media as agents in the social construction of reality (Gamson 1992) and in the creation of a societal worldview (Cohen & Young 1982). The reporting of disability issues has tended to follow the medical model of disability and such themes as medical and other controversies, causes, cures, symptoms and associated behaviours have been reported. Disabled people are generally "talked about" rather then being able to speak for themselves. We argue that the attitudes perpetuated in the news media act as barriers towards inclusion of disabled people in main stream society. In this research we have analyzed stories about autism from four major US publications to demonstrate what is written about disabled people and ask how the news media are creating the "reality" about a particular disability, autism, for their audiences.