Liz Carr, writing on the [UK] Guardian’s website, says media portrayals of people with disabilities are skewed toward wannabe celebrities, athletes and people who want to die by way of assisted suicide. “This unapologetic bias only serves to misrepresent millions of disabled peoples’ lives,” she says. An excerpt:

In our society, the prevailing view of illness and disability is that they’re a tragedy and thus the decision to die is often seen as entirely rational, inevitable and even brave. Rarely is this status quo challenged but instead the majority of press reports reinforce it. We are forever hearing about the campaign to assist people to die with dignity, for example, but what about the equally compelling campaign to assist people to live with dignity? Balanced media coverage of this issue is not just essential, it’s a matter of life and death.

Earlier story on Carr here. She’s called an “outspoken disabled comic.” Interview and video of her comedy act is here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 3:06 pm and is filed under assisted suicide, commentary, humor, media, public attitudes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.