Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In the past decade, the mass media discovered disability. Spurred by the box-office appeal of superstars such as the late Christopher Reeve, Michael J. Fox, Stephen Hawking, and others, and given momentum by the success of Oscar-winning movies, popular television shows, best-selling books, and profitable websites, major media corporations have reversed their earlier course of hiding disability, bringing it instead to center stage. Yet depictions of disability have remained largely unchanged since the 1920s. Focusing almost exclusively on the medical aspect of injury or illness, the disability profile in fact and fiction leads inevitably to an inspiring moment of "overcoming." According to Riley, this cliché plays well with a general audience, but such narratives, driven by prejudice and pity, highlight the importance of "fixing" the disability and rendering the "sufferer" as normal as possible. These stories are deeply offensive to persons with disabilities. Equally important, misguided coverage has adverse effects on crucial aspects of public policy, such as employment, social services, and health care. Powerful and influential, the media is complicit in this distortion of disability issues that has proven to be a factor in the economic and social repression of one in five Americans. Newspapers and magazines continue to consign disability stories to the "back of the book" health or human-interest sections, using offensive language that has long been proscribed by activists. Filmmakers compound the problem by featuring angry misfits or poignant heroes of melodramas that pair love and redemption. Publishers churn out self-help titles and memoirs that milk the disability theme for pathos. As Riley points out, all branches of the media are guilty of the same crude distillation of the story to serve their own, usually fiscal, ends. Riley's lively inside investigation illuminates the extent of the problem while pinpointing how writers, editors, directors, producers, filmmakers, advertisers and the executives who give their marching orders go wrong, or occasionally get it right. Through a close analysis of the technical means of representation, in conjunction with the commentary of leading voices in the disability community, Riley guides future coverage to a more fair and accurate way of putting the disability story on screen or paper. He argues that with the "discovery" by Madison Avenue that the disabled community is a major consumer niche, the economic rationale for more sophisticated coverage is at hand. It is time, says Riley, to cut through the accumulated stereotypes and find an adequate vocabulary that will finally represent the disability community in all its vibrant and fascinating diversity.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface
• Heroes of Assimilation: Or How the Media Transform Disability
• Whose Life Is It Anyway? The Use and Abuse of the Disability Memoir
• Getting It on Paper: Revising the Disability Story for the Print Media
• I'd Like to Thank the Academy: Losing Focus on Disability in Movies and Television
• And Here's the Pitch: How Advertising Uses Disability
• Milestones, Mixed Messages, and Missed Opportunities: The Unfinished Business of the Disability Media
• WE: The Short Happy Life of an Independent Magazine
• "On the Web We're All Equal": And Other Myths about Disability and Multimedia
• Appendix A Guidelines for Portraying People with Disabilities in the Media
• Appendix B Guidelines for Web Accessibility
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This book is cranky, idiosyncratic, witty, readable, funny, and beautifully written. An expert on and spokesperson for those with disabilities, Riley (English, Baruch College, CUNY, and a former journalist) takes no prisoners as he skewers the disability memoir, television and film depictions of disability, uses of disability in advertising, the world of insider disability print and electronic media, and more. He explains the "Reeve effect" ("unrelenting media sentimentality") and wonders if the California public library system has a "workbook ... with templates for the blind, deaf, returning veteran, and degenerative muscular or neurological disease movies." He notes that film and television "touch millions only to leave them as smugly ignorant as ever." In Appendix A, "Guidelines for Portraying People with Disabilities in the Media," he provides some helpful hints. The book is also a tour of how print and electronic media operate in general, so it will have broad use in communication and journalism collections. The index and bibliography provide entry for students and scholars into the emerging field of disability and media studies. ^BSumming Up: Essential. All collections; all levels. P. A. Murphy University of Toledo

Author notes provided by Syndetics

CHARLES A. RILEY II is a newsroom veteran, the co-founder of WeMedia, the first multimedia company devoted to people with disabilities, and the former editor-in-chief of WE, its national lifestyle magazine. A former reporter covering politics and policy, science and finance for Fortune magazine, former senior editor of Art & Auction magazine, and a frequent contributor to Art & Antiques magazine, Dr. Riley has appeared on CNN, CNNfn, NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox News and NPR as a commentator on disability-related issues. He has won major service awards for his coverage of disability from Easter Seals, United Cerebral Palsy, the National Recovery Alliance, and other organizations. The author of nine books on the arts, Riley is Associate Professor of English at Baruch College/City University of New York.