WE’VE ALL READ headlines like this before: “This Student With Cerebral Palsy Went To Prom With Her Best Friend And It Was Magical.” For decades, the media has tended to portray people with disabilities (or those around them) as inspirations or heroes—a genre of reporting known as “inspiration porn.”
There are countless stories about waiters helping to feed patrons with disabilities (and getting a new job for doing so), friends helping disabled people with basic tasks that have nothing to do with their disabilities, and very public “promposals” similar to the one touted in the headline above. Many of these stories go viral.
Most recently, the internet’s collective heart melted over a story about a mother who received an honorary MBA degree after attending classes with her quadriplegic son while he was in business school. According to the story, first reported by The Orange County Register on May 20, Judy O’Connor moved from Florida to southern California to help her son Marty, from taking notes for him in class at Chapman University to writing down his answers for exams. It was at the Chapman graduation ceremony that Judy received the degree—originally her son’s idea.
Three days after The Orange County Register published the article, the Associated Press picked it up, and soon nearly every major news outlet in the United States, from CNN to Peoplemagazine, had covered it.
THERE IS NO DOUBT that most of these stories—aimed at restoring faith in humanity— are grounded in good intentions. But this emotion-driven journalism is the hallmark of inspiration porn, which often focuses on the altruism of those who help people with disabilities. Although the term has been around for several years, “inspiration porn” was popularized in a TED talk that the late Australian activist Stella Young gave in April 2014. Her talk now has more than 2.4 million viewsonline.
Of the eight news values (proximity, timeliness, prominence, magnitude, conflict, oddity, impact, and emotion), emotion too often rises to the top when telling stories about disability communities. The story about the mother getting an honorary MBA degree is newsworthy because it tugs at readers’ heartstrings. But inspiration porn rarely goes beyond that to address major disability issues like workplace discrimination, stigma and bullying, and accessibility in schools. Does Chapman provide personal aides for disabled students like Marty O’Connor? How can colleges better promote a more inclusive learning environment for disability communities at large?