Media Representation of Canadians with Disabilities
By Doug Caldwell, Producer, "Moving On" (Doug_Caldwell@cbc.ca)


Introduction
"No News is Bad News." So read the title of a report published by a Canadian Senate committee in 1988. It described the virtual absence of people with disabilities and coverage of issues that matter to them in the mainstream Canadian media. If people with disabilities were invisible fifteen years ago, the best that can be said in 2003 is that they present a slightly more substantial image, sometimes seen, but seldom recognized as part of the mainstream.

Not only is this disappointing, it's somewhat surprising to Canadians with disabilities and their advocates. Their legal status has improved in the past two decades. While there is no Canadian equivalent of the Americans with Disabilities Act, federal law does prohibit discrimination on several grounds, including disability, and mandates various types of accommodation, including accessible buildings and transportation. In addition, the federal government endorses affirmative action for four groups of people, including those with disabilities. Its policies encourage employers in federally regulated industries, including the media, to hire members of those designated groups. That has made a difference in the banking industry, and there are tentative signs that media employers are taking notice. But on a daily basis, Canadian consumers of mass media see almost nothing that reflects the lives of people with disabilities. Nor, with rare exceptions, is any of that news brought to them by journalists with disabilities.

Most of the Canadian media is privately owned. Only one newspaper, The Toronto Star, which has a long liberal tradition, assigns a reporter to cover disability issues. She writes a weekly column from an independent living perspective. CITY-TV, a Toronto station that has built a large and loyal audience by reflecting the diversity of the city in its on-air staff, has long employed a general assignment reporter who uses a wheelchair. Employees with disabilities are scattered here and there among newspaper and broadcast production staff, but in numbers well below their percentage of the population. Fortunately, if one looks beyond the private sector, the picture is significantly brighter.

There has long been a substantial public presence in Canadian broadcasting and filmmaking. The Canadian government declared in the 1930's that the airwaves are publicly owned. It also accepted that no privately owned Canadian broadcaster could, or would, produce Canadian programming as a commercial alternative to the American networks. To ensure a meaningful Canadian presence in broadcasting and film, Parliament created the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). (Both have an "arm's length" relationship with Parliament to preserve their independence.) In the last thirty years it has also developed a complex set of programs to support independent filmmakers and television producers. As a result, more people with disabilities are now working in public broadcasting, filmmaking and independent film and TV production. That is where this paper will focus.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (http://www.cbc.ca)
The CBC produces a television program that puts people with disabilities at the center of its stories. It is the only North American network, and one of only a handful in the world, to do so. What is now Moving On began as a radio program. In the early 1980s a small group of Canadian disability advocates, working through chapters of Centers on Independent Living (C.I.Ls), launched a program on a university radio station. Their primary aim was to promote the independent living philosophy by accurately portraying the lives, achievements, interests and dreams of people with disabilities. They hoped to counter commonly held assumptions about people with disabilities as victims or sufferers of afflictions.

The radio program was successful enough that the C.I.Ls created a national non-profit organization, The Foundation on Independent Living, to raise funds for and administer the show. By 1990 the radio program had moved to CBC television as "The Disability Network." "D-Net", as it came to be known, was a disability news-oriented program and looked very much like what it was - a radio show that had migrated to TV. For it's first few years it received substantial funding from the federal government.

In 1995 the federal government began a stringent deficit-cutting exercise. Dnet's budget endured drastic cuts: an eighty percent rollback by the time it ended in 1997. But because it's federal funding had depended on hiring people with disabilities, over fifty people were trained in Dnet's seven seasons. Many of them continue to work in the media.

As the public broadcaster, the CBC recognized its responsibility to the audience that Dnet served. As funding dwindled, the CBC stepped in with a proposal to revamp the production as a lifestyle program in partnership with The Foundation on Independent Living. The CBC provided technical resources; the Foundation raised the cash. Moving On launched in January 1998 with a completely new look and a new host, Joanne Smith, a young veteran of Dnet. The CBC is now the full owner of the program.

The new program uses documentary techniques to tell stories about people with disabilities who are developing their own ways to live more independently. Moving On covers the workplace, health, technology, relationships, arts and entertainment, sports and recreation and every other facet of life. The audience sees people with disabilities as capable human beings.

Moving On began its sixth season in April 2003. It is broadcast across Canada on CBC Television, and repeated on the provincial public broadcasters in Ontario and British Columbia. The CBC audience alone averages about 200,000 viewers weekly. The program has won numerous national and international awards, including a Gemini, the Canadian Emmy and a national Human Rights Award.

There is very little coverage of disability issues elsewhere on CBC Television or Radio. For several years the case of a prairie farmer who murdered his severely disabled daughter received extensive news coverage. The case sparked a heated national debate about euthanasia, which was also thoroughly covered. (Robert Latimer has exhausted all appeals; he is serving a life sentence for murder.) Likewise, supporters of a British Columbia woman dying from Lou Gehrig's disease shrewdly generated coverage for her "right to die." Stories about medical "breakthroughs" always interest editors; in most other, limited coverage, victim or hero stereotypes still predominate.

In 2002, CBC Television introduced an internship program aimed at diversifying its workforce. One of the first two people to enter the program has cerebral palsy and a Ph.D. A small number of people with disabilities work for the CBC, including the host of Moving On and the producer of a popular local Radio current affairs program. The corporation is publicly committed to diversifying its workforce; it remains to be seen if the number of people with disabilities on its staff will grow.

National Film Board of Canada (http://www.nfb.ca/)
The Canadian government established the National Film Board in 1939 to develop a Canadian film industry. It has produced relatively few feature films, but has earned an international reputation for excellence in documentaries and animated films. The Board's productions, nominated for 65 Academy Awards, have won nine. The Board itself won a tenth for overall achievement. It has a reputation for fostering maverick filmmakers with progressive social and political views, but a mere 102 films about people with disabilities appear among the 10,000 titles in its catalogue. Almost all cover Canadian subjects; all but a dozen are non-fiction. Three of the latter are feature length.

During the Board's first three decades, it produced only a small number of disability-related films. Five films made in the 1940s, not surprisingly, focus on the rehabilitation of veterans who lost limbs or were disfigured in World War II. Most material shot in the 1950s is contained in newsreels; the exceptions are a handful of films about employment, education and rehabilitation. Only seven films emerged in the 1960s, most about education or rehabilitation.

Beginning in the 1970s, production of films about people with disabilities did increase. The Board's filmmakers turned out 75 films by the end of the century. In the preceding thirty years they had averaged less than one a year. This work reflected an increasingly sophisticated view of disability.

Many films dealt with the experiences of individuals and families living with a specific disability; others offered advice about dealing with and preventing physical and sexual abuse of people with disabilities. Still others addressed themselves to barriers to accessibility, education and employment. Of special note, as early as 1992 "Toward Intimacy" and "Making Perfect Babies" explored, respectively, sexual intimacy between people with disabilities and the ethics of genetic screening for potential disabilities.

Another NFB production of interest, "Just a Wedding," (1999) tells the story from the point of view of a woman with a physical disability who is determined to organize her own marriage ceremony. The woman, Nadia, was first introduced to film audiences in the 1970s through an Academy Award winning short, "I'll Find a Way," as a young girl about to enter public school. Twenty some years later, Nadia searched out NFB filmmaker Beverly Shaffer and said, "Now, let's finish the story."

Picture This (http://www.picturethisfestival.org)
Picture This is Canada's only disability film festival. Calgary's SCOPE Society, a community action group that advocates for people with disabilities, started the festival in 2001. Organizers received 116 entries. Just under half were Canadian made. The number of entries declined substantially in 2002, to 68, but with no loss of diversity. Less than a third were made in Canada.

Vern Reynolds-Braun, festival Director, estimates that a writer, producer or director with a disability is involved in about twenty-five percent of the entries. Several categories have filled the program in both years: short dramas, long-form documentaries, inexpensive home videos, and high-end animation. Juries are equally diverse. In addition to producers, writers and actors, people with disabilities, caregivers, and parents judge the entries.

Attendance was down substantially in 2002. The organizers attribute this to a misdirected local advertising campaign. Few filmmakers attended, deterred by the cost of travel to western Canada and the total absence of distributors. But the organizers aren't giving up. They have just received 60 entries for the February 2004 festival and working on correcting the problems that plagued their sophomore event.

Independent Production
Producers who need an actor with a disability go to Sue Charness. As a polio survivor and the only agent exclusively for people with disabilities in Canada, she has a unique perspective on employment of disabled talent. She began by recruiting potential actors in malls and on the street, then hitting the phones to get them work. Eleven years later, she has 75 clients who appear in commercials, films, television and print ads. Landing substantial parts for them is hard. None of her clients has had a lead role; few even get speaking parts. In 2002 a 14-year old client won a recurring role on Degrassi Street, the revival of a popular and globally syndicated TV series about Toronto teenagers. Charness rates that one of her more notable successes. She has placed deaf actors and others with disabilities in some of the many American-produced films made in and around Toronto. But in a very busy film and TV milieu, she believes she is far less busy than other agents she knows.

Elsewhere in the independent sector, Nelvana Productions, a Toronto animation house, has enjoyed remarkable success in the past few years with two programs created by John Callahan, an American cartoonist. Pelswick is a wickedly funny cartoon show about a teenage boy who uses a wheelchair. The CBC gives it a prominent spot in its after school schedule. Quads takes Pelswick's edgy humor to another level; whether higher or lower depends on one's taste. It's definitely blacker and unquestionably politically incorrect. The Comedy Channel carries it late at night in Canada. Both have won a number of awards and loyal audiences. Both are unique for their unapologetic assertion that people with disabilities can be as funny, absurd, and offensive as any other group of human beings.

Canadians with disabilities are much more visible in the public places of their country than they were even a decade ago. Their limited presence in the media remains a pale reflection of that change. Perhaps an updated edition of that "No News is Bad News" Senate report would be sardonically titled "Some is More." For the authors of that 1988 report would recognize that there has been some change for the better, and that in some sectors there is not only the hope but also the intent to accelerate the pace of progress.