Paralympics and the Media

Still a complicated relationship?

6 minutes to read
10 January 2018
Jelena

Still a complicated relationship?

In a few weeks, on March 8, 2018, the XII Paralympic Winter Games will start in Pyeongchang, South Korea. For this reason, we will provide an up-to-date overview of how the media coverage of the Paralympic Games has evolved over time – and what it has (not yet) reached.

The media are a key element for the reporting of sport events, such as the Olympics or Paralympics. Where else should we look up the latest results, new world records and information on the various athletes? Whether it is on television, newspapers or online: the media are the essential channel to receive information.

Unfortunately, there have been significant differences in the media coverage regarding the Olympics and Paralympics. There is scientific evidence that the Paralympics receive less media attention than the Olympics. In this article, I will briefly take you throughout the history of the relationship between the media and the Paralympics. Special focus will be on the crucial change in the media management starting from the 2012 Paralympics in London.

The beginning of the Paralympics and its media coverage

Source: Flickr / Paul Townsend

According to Goggin and Hutches (2017), the media have already been reporting on the Paralympics since the 1950s onwards. However, the media began to gain an increasingly relevant role for the Paralympics only with the Games in Rome in the 1960s. But there was a crucial problem occurring back then, and it is still occurring today: even if the Paralympics gained media attention, the articles about this sporting event were mainly found on the society pages, not in the sport section. Moreover, they were mainly written as features and not as sport articles, which amplified the degradation of people with disabilities.

With the technological improvement it was possible to reach a vast audience and cover live sport broadcast, which proved to be very popular and effective. Despite this, the Paralympics still represented a minority. Golden (2003) wrote about the “invisible” minority, which implies also the non-coverage of handicapped sports. The term relates to the medial trend of not covering enough stories about people with disabilities in general, which indicates the notion that disabled people are not fully a part of the society.

To solve this problem, measures were taken to present the Paralympics as a newsworthy, international sporting spectacle. But again, despite these ambitions the way to reach equality regarding this issue was still a long way to go. Throughout time, the Paralympics were facing issues such as parochialism, biases, segregation, patronizing attitudes, as well as insensitive language. Goggin and Hutchins conclude that the Paralympics presented an unfamiliar challenge for journalism back then, leading to “superficial and curious” coverage.

With time, however, the media began to play an important role as outlet for disabled people, not only for disability sports, but also for presenting different perspectives, as well as arguing for equality, rights and justice.

Goggin and Hutchins identified the 2000 Paralympics as the start of groundbreaking changes, as the Games have been presented as major sporting event. For the first time, the media put emphasis on the representation of the impaired participants as elite athletes. This change symbolized the movement away from the stereotyped population of impaired individuals who do not participate in regular and demanding physical activity. Even though there have been noteworthy improvements, the amount of news articles about the event was still low.