“The Role Of Media In Reporting Homicides Involving People With Disabilities””

“It really goes back to the misunderstanding about disability—that disability is this horrendous life experience nobody wants to have,”-Vilissa Thompson

National data repeatedly indicates that people with disabilities are at higher risk for violent crime than people without disabilities. The deaths of people with disabilities at the hands of caregivers, including parents, is a particularly tragic subset of this broader pattern.

Moreover, when journalists cover the deaths of this vulnerable segment of the population, the focus is often directed at the murderer. Journalists, consciously or unconsciously, often write stories that build sympathy for the murderer and the circumstances that led them to their crime, while the person with a disability is erased from the story.

The news media far too often rushes in to explain, justify, and forgive the murderer. Theyproduce “killer-centered” stories that link disability to hardship, hardship to murder, anderase the victim’s life and death from the narrative. Judges, prosecutors, and juries tend to go more leniently on murderers whose victims are disabled, and the media tends to report such light sentences as understandable rather than outrageous. Reporters almost never quote experts on disability rights, nor do they ask people with disabilities to comment.

Instead, local beat reporters, chasing deadlines, quote neighbours who blithely state that the murderer truly loved his or her victim. Comment threads and social media hashtags proliferate emphasising empathy for the killers, but rarely seem to ask about the victim.

Overall, such coverage leads to further dehumanisation of people with disabilities, spreads the idea that their lives are worth less than non-disabled lives, and contributes to the exclusion of people with disabilities.

Children are especially vulnerable to this type of crime, parents are the most likely perpetrators, white Americans were most likely to kill or be killed. Of note, while male and female victims (we have no data on whether any were non- binary, in fact) are equal in number, women were slightly more likely to perpetrate such crimes than men. This stands in contrast to the national data on murder, and likely reflects the prominence of women in caregiving roles. More study is needed on all these demographic issues.

There’s a pervasive, society-wide, notion that disability simply equates to suffering. Many people do experience all kinds of difficulties related to all sorts of conditions. Too often,though, the assumption is that to be disabled is to be in distress and that to be in distress is to wish to be dead. In such contexts, murder appears not to be a violent crime, but an act of mercy, stripping agency away from the murder victim.

Journalists continue to explicitly use the phrase “mercy killing.” More perniciously, they imply that killings are merciful without using the phrase.

When reporters come upon a murder, they frequently turn to family members and neighbours for their initial quotes (along with law enforcement officials). This is an understandable practice, but it leads to highly prejudicial remarks being featured and setting the narrative for an incident. Reporters rarely balance such remarks by engaging local or national disability rights experts and self-advocates.

There are established journalistic best practices which are used to avoid encouraging copycat crimes. Focusing on the victim is one of these best practices. Additionally, journalists should avoid grisly sensationalism and in-depth descriptions of the method of murder. If possible, they should also avoid using the full name of the murderer in news coverage.

Crucially, journalists should not use coverage of a murder to give the murderer a platform. If they have left notes, blog posts, or other writings which describe their life or their intention to commit murder, printing direct quotes from these, should be avoided and definitely not reproduced in full. Coverage should not be solely concentrated on the point of view of the murderer.

In disability-motivated filicide cases, statements from the murderer about the life of the victim, or about the murderer’s motivations, are often reported uncritically. This can include arguments that the victim wanted (or “would have wanted”) to die, that the murderer killed out of love or concern for the victim’s future, or even details about what level of disability services a family was receiving. When covering a murder, the murderer should not be the sole source of information for any fact in the report.

While murdering loved ones with disabilities out of fear and ignorance is morally unacceptable, reporting those stories to support the murderers (e.g., the victims’ caregivers), recycle stereotypes about certain disabilities, or sanctifying people with disabilities are just as damaging to the disability community as the murders themselves.

Stories from the media are just snapshots of one’s life; therefore the public only gets to know a small part of a person. If the story about the victim is saturated with negative stereotypes on disability or the story promotes sympathy towards the perpetrators (i.e., the caregivers), then the audience will assume that not only disability is scary and burdensome, but also disabled people deserve to die when the caregivers cannot ‘control’ them anymore.

It is imperative for reporters to cover stories of caregivers killing people with disabilities in a way that doesn’t stigmatise the disability community. They should use the stories to bring awareness to this act and spark conservations on how to bring more resources to families

who need help with caring for loved ones with disabilities. Those stories are also opportunities for audiences to get exposed to preferred means of addressing of a person with a disability and meet people from PWD-led organisations who speak on the issue of media representation/depiction of the disability community.

One of the first things journalists should do when covering stories on homicides by caregivers is to speak with people with disabilities who follow those reports or are affected by neglect or pity from their caregivers. They are the experts because they have disabilities and experience stigma first-hand; they can provide to journalists views on why “mercy killings” is not beneficial and the importance of treating people with disabilities with dignity and respect.

Additionally, journalists should be mindful of which terms they use to describe people with mainstream audiences, but those same terms are not acceptable to the disability community. For instance, autistic people wouldn’t like it if a journalist refer to them as “people touched by autism”, “people stricken by autism”, “people living with autism”, etc.

Those allude to autism being a burden to the person who has it AND those around them.

“Autistic people”, “people with autism” , or “_____ has autism” are more acceptable, but it’s still wise to ask someone in the disability community first which term(s) to use in an upcoming story.

When covering stories on “mercy killings”, any media professional should ask the disability community which terms are acceptable to use in the story and what should they refer the person with a disability as (e.g., “autistic person”, “They have cerebral palsy”, “person with Down’s Syndrome”). They are the primary sources that journalists to turn to for figuring out appropriate terms to use to describe the disability community.

Currently, stories that are tied to the main coverage of “mercy killings” either tend to praise the caregivers for killing people with disabilities, eulogise people with disabilities, or demonize people with disabilities. All three points of view severely harm to the disability community and could even drown out voices of people speaking out against those acts of violence.

Reforming how the news outlets depict people with disabilities may take time, and it may take longer periods of time for those who have never been exposed to the disability community before or have been accustomed to accepting mythical stereotypes of people with disabilities. However, those steps can help begin to promote disability acceptance, addressing “mercy killings” in more perspectives, and ultimately ending “mercy killings”.

If done with care and diligence, then the tools will help journalists connect with the disability community more and spread the message of the dangers of “mercy killings” to the public.

Disabled people deserve to live. Disabled people should live in spaces where they are free from having their very lives jeopardised. Disabled people are worthy of being loved and valued. It is about time we saw their lives as not inferior because they are disabled. They are not burdens to their families, caregivers, communities, or society. It is long overdue for the media to understand these truths, and to stop the perpetuation that killing disabled people is warranted and not remain steadfast in demanding that the full extent of the law be sought after and enforced.

Cushioning the effects of filicide and caregiving murders increases the pity expressed towards the guilty and fewer convictions seen, both of which can no longer continue or be defended.