11. Communicating and Managing the Message: Media and Media Representation of Disability and Paralympic Sport

Media coverage given to an issue or event suggests the ‘value’ placed on it by editors or programmers. The media covers an issue or event for a variety of reasons, be it financial, perceived interest to the target audience or simply newsworthiness. Therefore, if a newspaper or TV station provides more airtime to non-disabled issues or events (e.g. the Olympic Games) than to disability issues or events (e.g. the Paralympic Games), it would appear that they perceive one to have far greater ‘value’ than the other. One reason for such a situation in the context of sport is that sport is a creation of and for non-disabled people, which gives priority to certain types of human movement (Barton 1993). Disability sport does not, apparently, provide images that fit within the norms that delineate sporting images within society at large. This lack of exposure has numerous knock-on effects that will be outlined throughout the chapter. However, when disability sport receives good quality coverage it may, potentially, introduce people to concepts and ideas they may never have entertained before, or go against what they have been socialised to believe regarding both disability and disability sport. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to highlight some of the issues around media representation of disability in general and Paralympic and disability sport in particular, and then look at some of the ways that the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and the wider Paralympic Movement have responded to these issues, and why. The chapter will examine how the IPC and the Paralympic Movement seek to manage the media and the messages that are conveyed around the Paralympic Games. It will conclude with some examples of how the media in the UK and the USA has responded to criticism in light of the growing interest in and importance of the Paralympic Games.