During 2008, disability has had its fair share of airtime but, as a disabled woman, I'm left wondering where are my role models?
Throughout the summer there were two disabled people on our TV screens night after night thanks to Big Brother. I'm not sure appearing on reality TV is any benchmark of equality in media representation but rather it's a fair indication that disabled people are just as desperate for their 15 minutes of D list celeb status.
As summer came to an end, the Paralympics received unparalleled coverage. That's fine but when the majority of disability TV time is given over to these super athletes, doesn't it just serve to make the rest of us look lazy? Coincidently, two months later incapacity benefit was replaced by employment and support allowance. Perhaps that should be employment and sport.
The only other role model on offer to me these days seems to be the ill and/or disabled person who wants to end it all. I can't switch on my TV, open a paper or log onto the internet without being confronted by yet another story about yet another person who wants assisted suicide to be legalised in the UK. As the law stands, while it's legal to commit suicide in England, if you can't physically do the act yourself then it is illegal for someone to assist you.
My intention is not to use this blog to discuss the issue of assisted suicide, but instead the increasing media coverage afforded to the subject in recent months. It's not that I'm especially pro-life, religious or unsympathetic. It's just that I believe the reporting of assisted suicide is usually dangerously lacking in any in-depth debate, analysis and, most crucially, balance.
At the last count, 725 English people had signed up to Dignitas, the Swiss organisation that assists people to commit suicide. In contrast, there are well over 10 million disabled people in the UK. The vast amount of publicity given to the pro-euthanasia lobby, however, would seem to suggest that it's the majority of us who want to book a one-way ticket to Switzerland. This unapologetic bias only serves to misrepresent millions of disabled peoples' lives.
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.
That is why 2009 has to be the year when simplistic, superficial and one-sided reporting of assisted suicide is replaced with a diversity of stories featuring disabled people who don't necessarily want to meet Davina, go for gold or end it all. They're the kind of role models I've been waiting a lifetime to see.
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