Representation of Disabled Community in Mainstream Media

There are limited research questioning the relationship between the disabled community and media, particularly in Malaysia. The lack of awareness and common assumption of specialty towards the disabled community have caused a small amount of local disability researches that question the relationship between the disabled community and the media. This research aims to find out the types of representation of disability in the Malaysian mainstream media, particularly press. Interview with visual disabled personnel and content analysis from news coverage of mainstream press are deployed in the study. The findings indicated the invalidity of disability culture as the misrepresentation of disabled community in Malaysia is not as severe as depicted by scholars because the news coverage focusing on them is getting more positive. Besides that, disabled people are not defensive towards the terms used to refer them as long as media practitioners do not over amplify their disability. The application of charity approach is still common in news coverage to portray the disabled community as victim, and therefore they are partially marginalized due to the misrepresentation in Malaysian mainstream press.