‘A genuinely emotional week’: learning disability,sport and television – notes on the Special Olympics GB National Summer Games 2009

Abstract

In July 2009, the Special Olympics Great Britain National Summer Games for athletes with learning disabilities were held in Leicester. Uniquely the Games achieved considerable television news coverage. This article offers a preliminary analysis of television representations of the Games. National TV coverage of the Paralympics is now established, but Special Olympics – and sport for people with learning disabilities in general – receives little media or research attention. This is partly because Special Olympics remains located outside mainstream national sporting networks and its ethos stresses the importance of participation over sporting excellence. The 2009 Games’ television coverage projected complex and ‘mixed’ messages reflected in the language, tone and images typically employed by broadcasters. We identify three key themes: first, the problematically relentless ‘positive’ tone of the coverage, which echoes wider public discourses concerning learning disability; second, the media emphasis on ‘human interest’ narratives and so, via these, the invidualizing of learning disability questions and the general absence of any wider discussion of political or social agendas linking sport and disability; finally, how television in its occasional focus on the families of athletes with learning disabilities articulated values and tensions which characterize the unusually conflicted status of the Games.

Keywords

BBC ITV learning disability local television Special Olympics sport

In July 2009, the English East Midlands city of Leicester for the second time hosted the Special Olympics Great Britain (SOGB) National Summer Games for people with learning disabilities.¹ The Games were organized by Special Olympics Leicester (SOL) and were delivered via a partnership with SOGB, Leicester City Council and various sponsors. Unlike the first Leicester Games of 1989, the 2009 Games could boast for the first time an official free-to-air broadcasting partner, the commercial ITV channel.

This article examines aspects of the domestic television coverage of the 2009 Games, focusing specifically on examples drawn from evening broadcasts carried on regional news programmes, especially ITV but also the BBC.² In particular, we are interested in identifying any ‘dominant regime of representation’ (Hall, 1997: 232) in this television coverage of learning disability sport by assessing the extent to which the coverage succeeded in avoiding some familiar ‘pitfalls’ of television coverage of disability, such as projecting sporting images which individualize and medicalize athletes (Schantz and Gilbert, 2001; Schell and Duncan, 1999) and which, ‘portray people narrowly as sensational, sentimental or pathological’ (Garland-Thomson, 2010: 23). Sport – like a number of cultural arenas – is often, unrealistically, advertised as a site to promote social inclusion and to tackle marginalization (Allday, 2009). But because of the media’s routine emphasis on representations of young, fit and healthy bodies, sport’s perceived role is often conflicted and contradictory on matters of disability. It is also unclear whether providing more media coverage of disability sport per se is likely to ‘invisibilize’ disability (DePauw, 1997) or indeed challenge wider public perceptions of people with disabilities (Smith and Thomas, 2005: 64).

This article poses a number of key questions regarding media depictions of people with learning disabilities and examines how regional evening television news framed and interpreted SOL 2009 as a media event. Through local evening news television coverage on ITV and the BBC, the Special Olympics achieved extended public exposure in the UK for the first time. Such unique coverage reminds us that:

representation matters; that public portrayals of disabled people have effects and consequences which – though slippery, diffuse and difficult to trace – are nevertheless ubiquitous and capable of powerfully shaping disabled people’s lives in innumerable and very tangible ways. (Sandell and Dodd, 2010: 3)

More specifically, we have three main questions we wish to address. First, what strategies did television use in order to interpret and legitimate the 2009 Games for its target audience and to what extent – if at all – did SOGB and SOL attempt to manage the TV coverage and, thus, manage media representations of people with learning disabilities? Second, to what extent did the aesthetics, tone and discourses identified in the television coverage of the Games reflect or challenge dominant public attitudes regarding people with learning disabilities? Third, how did local TV news and sports journalists interpret and report on the learning disability/sports dyad and to what extent did local coverage attempt to make wider points about learning disability beyond the usual tendency to individualize and pathologize disability sport?

Special Olympics, sport and representations of learning disability

Opportunities in sport for people with learning disabilities in the UK have traditionally been very limited. It was the example of the Special Olympics movement in the United States in the 1960s that provided a model for initial developments in the UK. The key influential American figure was Eunice Kennedy-Shriver, sister of John F. Kennedy. Another Kennedy sibling, Rosemary, had been diagnosed with a learning disability and, in 1962, through the influence of the Kennedy dynasty, Kennedy-Shriver first established summer camps for US children with learning disabilities. In 1968 the first Special Olympics took place in Chicago (Barton, 2009: 10–11).

Special Olympics UK was founded in 1978 as a charitable voluntary organization. It expanded into a regional structure with the overall aim of raising funds and recruiting volunteers to provide training programmes and sporting competition for both adults and children with learning disabilities, culminating every four years in a Summer Games for a selection of athletes. The first National Summer Games took place in Knowsley on Merseyside in 1982 and covered 12 sports for 800 athletes. By 2009, the re-named Special Olympics GB had 135 registered clubs, with more than 8000 athletes. There are also over 2200 coaches and volunteers attached to SOGB. SOL 2009 was the eighth National Summer Games and around 2500 athletes competed in 21 sports (Barton, 2009: 14–17). Unlike the internationally recognized Paralympics, where athletes are classified on the basis of their disability, at Special Olympics grading for competition is based on the relative ability of athletes.

Richard Dyer’s (1988) seminal discussion on the meaning of different forms of ‘representation’ is a useful starting point for addressing some key issues regarding television coverage of disability sport. First, for example, distinctions between the ‘real’ world and selective media representations of disability are often confirmed by the typical television focus on the medical model of disability, which tends to highlight the exclusion and segregation of people with disabilities (Goodley, 2001). Disabled people have been habitually under-represented on television and, when they are depicted, it is usually within the context of negative stereotypes, which are likely to harm the group being represented (Dyer, 1988: 3; Hartnett, 2000). These stereotypes include: the disabled person as pitiable and pathetic; as an object of curiosity or violence; as sinister or evil; as the freakish ‘super cripple’; as his/her own worst enemy; as a burden and non-sexual; and as being unable to participate in daily life. In film and drama, disabled characters have, typically, been more likely to evoke sympathy, pity, sadness, fear or a patronizing attitude (Barnes, 1991; Hartnett, 2000). Darke (2004: 100) has argued that ‘the representation of disability in the media … is pretty much the same as it has always been: clichéd, stereotyped and archetypal’. In this sense, more progressive ‘disability perspective’ television output today may offer limited forms of media representation in which disabled people can indeed ‘speak for themselves’ (Dyer, 1988: 3). However, these examples are usually subordinated, we would argue, by a tabloidized ‘freak’ philosophy that more often exploits disability for voyeuristic, commercial purposes.

Recent research in Britain on media coverage of physically disabled athletes has identified some positive changes over time (Brittain, 2004: 446; Smith and Thomas, 2005: 53). However, athletes with a disability still tend to be more typically located as ‘tragic’ and rather passive figures – that is, as people who are disempowered by ‘experts’ who decide the disability categorization of athletes, something that has important consequences for identity formation (Howe, 2009; Peers, 2009). In addition, much of the existing research on disability sport and the media has argued that elite Paralympian athletes continue to be depicted as ‘supercrips’, as ‘exceptionals’ who overcome insurmountable odds to conquer their disability (Nixon, 2007: 424).³ While many people with learning disabilities also have physical disabilities, there have been no comparable studies of the relationship between sport, learning disability and the media. Moreover, wider public discussion on the way the media treats disability has tended to focus on physical, rather than learning disability. Furthermore, the very concept of Special Olympics has proved to be controversial in the disability policy/sport arena: its dual emphasis on both separation and normalization and on participation as well as competition is argued to have helped shape wider public perceptions of people with learning disabilities.

The North American academic Keith Storey (2004, 2008), for example, has argued that the very existence of Special Olympics risks perpetuating inequalities and divisions between the disabled and non-disabled by effectively continuing the derided 1960s policy of segregation instead of promoting policies of integration. Storey also argues that the training and ‘separation’ offered by Special Olympics programmes provides no real choices for disabled people; they risk reinforcing negative stereotyping and perpetuating binary barriers between ‘us’ and ‘them’. He also claims that Special Olympics promotes a patronizing and infantilizing public ‘hugging’ mentality towards people with a learning disability. He asserts that public responses to events such as Special Olympics are largely emotionally driven; that the non-disabled majority are invited to admire the ‘humbling’, against-all-the-odds ‘bravery’ and ‘determination’ of these social ‘unfortunates’, more than they are for their real talents and skills as athletes or as ‘ordinary’ (and, like everyone else, flawed) individuals (Storey, 2004, 2008).

Similar concerns were expressed by learning disability advisers in Leicester before the 2009 Games:

I’m not sure Special Olympics – or ‘special’ anything – is the way we should be going.… Special Olympics is actually taking us back down a road that we have been trying to move along, which is that we’re not ‘special’; we want the same things as everybody else. Yes, we do want you to do it in a slightly different way for us. But I think the whole Special Olympics ethos is around difference, it’s not around inclusion.⁴

However, empirical research in Canada suggests different outcomes from those posited by Storey. Weiss et al. (2003: 298), for example, conclude that: ‘The more athletes participate in [Special Olympics] competitions, from local to international level events, the more positive their general self-worth.’ Other academic supporters of Special Olympics point out that the loss of time for other ‘functional activities’ because of training is rarely questioned in the case of non-disabled athletes and that, crucially, Special Olympics has important social, as well as sporting, functions for those involved. These include promoting physical fitness, social skills and access to positive public reinforcers during sporting competition (Hughes and McDonald, 2008; McLean, 2008). While these wider debates are beyond the immediate scope of this article, media coverage of Special Olympics – in both its form and content – reflects some of these prevailing tensions and points to the complex challenges faced in broadcasting the Games.

Television, local news and sport

So how was SOL 2009 presented on British television? To what extent, did such coverage reflect and stimulate wider debates about people with learning disabilities and Special Olympics in particular? There are two types of television output to consider here: first, local evening news programmes and, second, the general broadcasting of sport. Regional news generally attempts to project what has been described as a ‘family-style’ presentation, one based largely on a magazine format and mainly aimed at a local, family audience: its overwhelming purpose is to ‘reassure’ (Aldridge, 2007: 106–7). In terms of the typical audience ‘address’, regional news journalists model their output on the approach of a ‘respectable’ mid-market newspaper. This local TV news programme format, therefore, places a strong emphasis on human interest stories conveyed through the ‘familiar friend’ image of the studio presenters, plus well-known and comforting visual scenes drawn from the audience’s local region (Negrine and Eyre, 1998: 39–40).

However, it has also been argued that the BBC and ITV offer slightly different approaches in reporting style and in local news content. The self-image of the East Midlands region’s ITV offering, Central Tonight – the local platform for SOL 2009 – might be described as one of straight, ‘report it as it is’ hard news, human interest stories, mixed with approachable, safe, friendly, ‘sexy’ presenters; all of this is packaged within an entertaining ‘magazine-style’ format. Moreover, as a commercial TV station, ITV has a responsibility to its advertisers to produce programmes that appeal to sponsors and a mass audience. By contrast, the BBC generally adopts a slightly more educational and informational approach, in line with its Reithian traditions of public service broadcasting (Hill, 2002: 47–53). In terms of output, sport is very important to UK regional television. In 1996 it accounted for about one-fifth of total programme time, more than any other item (Negrine and Eyre, 1998: 44–7).

Coverage of the Special Olympics also brings unusual challenges for local broadcasters because of how sport itself is covered by British television. Here the notion of winning and losing is integral, with the emphasis usually on venerating winners and forensically analysing the failings of losers. However, in Special Olympics, although winning and competition remains important, another key emphasis is on personal development and participation. In this sense, Special Olympics reflects British sport’s amateur traditions more than it does the hyper-competitive and masculine materialism of modern televised professional sport (Messner and Sabo, 1994).

While late-modern sport is usually framed by its television coverage, current broadcasting techniques are actually a continuation of earlier traditions and features of sporting journalism. There continues to be a strong emphasis, for example, on individualizing success and perpetuating a form of hero-worshipping, more recently extending into the production of a ‘vortex’ of sporting celebrity (Whannel, 2001). Extensive television airtime is devoted to building up major events and singling out the stars to watch out for, soliciting the advice of ‘experts’ and forging ‘points of identification’ through sporting rivalries. Such techniques are argued to provide the most effective means of engaging and holding onto an audience (Whannel, 1990: 108–9). Moreover, television discussion of sport is largely ‘apolitical’: it aims to preserve the ‘back-page’ place of sport, ‘as something apart from other aspects of society’ (Hill, 2002: 52–3).

Nevertheless, Boyle and Haynes (2009: 7) have argued that media sport plays a central role in producing, reproducing and amplifying many of the dominant discourses about ‘winners and losers’ more widely associated with late-modern society. These meanings and rhetorics are reflected in ‘the narrative, audio-visual and technical and presentational/packaging aspects’ of media sport and have a number of common characteristics (Stead, 2008: 341). First, ‘spectacularization’ enhances entertainment through events such as opening ceremonies. Second, through ‘dramatization’ media professionals establish suspenseful and confrontational story-lines around sporting events and the individuals involved. Third, processes of ‘personalization’ encourage the audience to associate and warm to individual competitors (Stead, 2008: 341–2).

Fieldwork: television coverage of Special Olympics Leicester 2009

For this article we examined systematically the coverage of the Leicester Games on the BBC’s East Midlands Today and ITV’s Central Tonight between 25 and 31 July 2009. The main focus was on the Monday to Friday early evening 30-minute news programmes, which gave significant exposure to the Games. Because ITV was the first official media partner in the history of the Games, Central Tonight provided 34 minutes 32 seconds total coverage, while BBC East Midlands Today offered 10 minutes 51 seconds. Central Tonight also had a dedicated news team in Leicester during the week of the Games and each night a separate, short slot was given over on Central Tonight to the Special Olympics. The BBC integrated its rather briefer coverage into the nightly sports round-up.⁵ (The coverage analysed also included news bulletins from the preceding weekend and late-night mid-week bulletins.)

While ITV’s Special Olympics coverage was not a conventional media sports production, its presentation did highlight some of the normative techniques and characteristics of sports broadcasting. In addition, the meanings and discourses it projected shared similarities both with those typically used on local television and with media representations of people with learning disabilities more generally. In this sense, Special Olympics fitted ideally the dual agendas of local television news and TV sport, especially through its presumed ‘neutral’ nature and the Games’ characteristic proffering of media-attractive ‘human interest’ stories. Importantly, Gareth Owen, Central Tonight’s nightly presenter from Leicester, was not a sports journalist but the network’s Leicester-based news correspondent. This, it can be argued, had direct consequences for the nature of the SOL coverage and for coverage of people with learning disabilities more generally. Indeed, because of the specific character of the Games and the proliferation of Special Olympics’ events and classifications, it was difficult for the broadcasters to reproduce their regular sports coverage by concentrating on particular events, although there was an attempt to focus on certain Games ‘personalities’. As a result, there was a more ‘mixed’ reporting style and a ‘split focus’ regarding the typical television coverage. Central Tonight’s approach, especially, reflected the employment of these techniques and it encouraged the projection of wider interpretations about the connections between sport and learning disability. Gareth Owen summed up the news attractions of Special Olympics for local television:

Central Tonight is a serious news programme, but one which aims to tell compelling human interest stories: stories of achievement and endeavour. In that respect, coverage of the Special Olympics fitted perfectly into our programme. This was a major news event for the city of Leicester … full of colour and great pictures. But it was also a genuinely emotional week with hundreds of individuals doing things that they might not have previously believed possible. So for us, it had all of the elements that we would look for in a news story.⁶

This approach had been shaped by ITV’s barely formulated plans for their Games coverage and the challenges posed by the presentation of nightly TV sport with people with learning disabilities as its central figures. ITV’s Ian Payne, who was in charge of the entire UK coverage of the Games, admitted that, ‘We didn’t really know what to expect’ (ITV, 31 July 2009). Gareth Owen similarly admitted later that:

I knew that the Special Olympics existed, but I’m afraid that I knew very little about it. I had worked with people with learning disabilities in the past, so had some knowledge, although this was fairly limited. So, last summer was a new experience for me.

It was simply presumed that Special Olympics could be accommodated within TV journalists’ established ideologies and practices, so no specialist preparation or external advice was required – or sought – by the broadcasters. Nor was any proffered by SOGB or the local Games hosts, who seemed content with the fact of TV coverage (no payment was involved) and wary of damaging relations with their media partners. Instead, Central Tonight’s main focus was on the type of coverage promised and the logistical problems it might produce. Indeed, there were few meetings prior to the Games between Central Television and SOGB, and none of these addressed preferred editorial approaches to coverage of the Games and its athletes. Instead, broadcasters were left to apply their own professional imperatives. In this sense, the SOL Games were treated as ‘any other sporting event’.

Our fieldwork involved exchanges with journalists involved in the 2009 coverage, and an analysis of our collected television material using a version of theoretical thematic analysis. This approach allows for the flexible identification, interpretation and reporting of patterns (themes) within transcribed and coded data sub-sets (Braun and Clarke, 2006). A ‘theme’ in this context does not simply ‘emerge’ passively from the data (as it does in some forms of thematic analysis and grounded theory, for example), thus denying the researcher any active role in the analysis. The identified ‘themes’ must also constitute more than ‘anecdotalism’ (Bryman, 1988) and they must be responsive to the aesthetics, gestures and sound resonances of television presentation, as well as to the text of what is actually said. In this wider sense, the selected themes must typically capture features of real significance in the data by representing some level of patterned response or meaning within them. Thematic analysis further insists that the ‘keyness’ of an identified theme is not necessarily dependent on the use of quantifiable measures. Instead, it depends on whether it can be shown to capture something of defining importance in relation to the overall research agenda (Braun and Clarke, 2006: 82).

In employing the principles of thematic analysis, we have selected and analysed three features of the Games TV coverage, making particular reference to the language used, the general tone of the broadcasts, and the images and ‘soundscapes’ employed. First, we argue, in accordance with Storey’s critical thesis, that television coverage of the 2009 Games did promote something of a ‘hugging mentality’ in its representations of people with learning disabilities; what we term a ‘relentless positivity’. Second, we examine key themes in how Special Olympics athletes were interviewed on television and how this might shape wider public perceptions of people with learning disabilities. For the final theme, we look at how the ‘human interest’ angle of the Games was interpolated in the brief focus on the families of athletes. This ‘human interest’ emphasis rather confounded television’s potential to offer a wider political and social context for learning disability/sport issues.

‘Relentless positivity’

For most of the Games’ TV coverage a rather suffocating and consciously ‘positive’ image was deliberately and relentlessly projected. This occurred in terms of the role of Leicester as host city, the concept of the Games and as a barely hidden discourse of broadcaster self-congratulation for their own pioneering role in covering the event. This projection took a number of forms. First, the language used by reporters and interviewees was liberally spattered with use of superlatives for describing the Games and its athletes. In the BBC and ITV coverage analysed, for example, the word ‘fantastic’ was used 27 times by presenters, reporters and interviewees. Other examples include: ‘amazing’ – 14 times; ‘proud’ – 14; ‘fun’ – 14; ‘special’ (not in conjunction with Special Olympics) – 14; and ‘brilliant’ – 9. The use of this hyperbolic language and, more importantly, the general tone of the coverage it underpinned, was also transferred into regular Games reporting. In particular, each nightly report on ITV was usually prefaced with an unwaveringly upbeat message. The introductions below provide a couple of representative examples:

Gareth Owen:

Well, Bob, what an incredible couple of days here at Leicester, and it’s only just beginning. Just look, so many smiling faces here and for everyone here a really inspiring story of achievement. (ITV, 27 July)

Gareth Owen:

Bob, I’m having a whale of a time. It really is fantastic. It’s been amazing couple of days really since that opening ceremony. (ITV, 27 July)

Another dimension of this ‘positivity’ and of media uncertainty about the status of the Games was the embellishment of the quality of the performances and the competition involved. On one occasion the standard of the athletics events was described as ‘very high indeed’ for an event that actually placed a stronger emphasis on participation over excellence. Moreover, the TV script was prone to descend into condescending cliché. For example:

Gareth Owen:

[to winning athlete] You’re going to take it [gold medal] home for the West Midlands. (ITV, 27 July)

Gareth Owen:

Just one more round of competition tomorrow and whether finishing first or last, the triumph has been in the competing. (ITV, 30 July)

Attempts were also made in the coverage to imply that there were obvious benefits to be had simply by linking sport and disability (Smith and Thomas, 2005):

Studio Anchor:

Now time to prove that sport can offer enormous rewards, whatever your ability. We’re taking you back to the Special Olympics. (BBC, 29 July)

The presenters in the studios (the anchors) played an important role in legitimating this seamlessly positive image of the Games via the routine production of their own supportive comment on Special Olympics, and especially in their supposedly casual and spontaneous exchanges with on-site reporters. For example, during coverage of the Games Closing Party, the ITV anchor, in linking up with Gareth Owen, concluded:

Studio Anchor (Male):

Yes, final day of the National Special Olympics Summer Games and Gareth it has been a truly amazing week hasn’t it?

Gareth Owen:

It really has Bob, and it’s been rounded off magnificently here. (ITV, 31 July)

These kinds of intimate and relaxed on-screen exchanges engage the viewer and invite them to identify with the values of the programme while providing little detail about how these assumptions have been formed (Brunt, 1990: 65). In addition to these reports and exchanges, the coverage was complemented by sounds and images that also reflected the ‘relentless positivity’ theme. On ITV’s Monday night coverage, for example, Gareth Owen was surrounded by athletes and others, who were smiling and waving manically at the camera thus establishing the impression of a happy, fun-filled and not-so-serious social event. ITV ended its Monday evening programme with images taken from the Opening Ceremony, accompanied, pointedly, with the song, ‘The Universal’ by the British pop band Blur. Even as the weather worsened later in the week, this television focus on loudly enthusing athletes and family members barely wavered. In addition, throughout the coverage, images were relayed of athletes giving the ‘thumbs-up’ sign directly to camera, thus emphasizing that, above all else, the Games were relaxed and celebratory.

ITV’s Games coverage was concluded with a highlights package that ended the Friday evening programme and which attempted to ‘capture’ the week. It included shots of the Opening Ceremony, the lighting of the Special Olympics flame, as well as a film clip of BBC football presenter Gary Lineker speaking at the Games. The coverage of Lineker and other able-bodied sporting celebrities was a conventional strategy for legitimizing the Games for the target audience. There were also action shots of different sports, plus clips of interviews with athletes who were using their own superlatives about the Games: ‘Being in the Special Olympics and winning gold, it just felt amazing.’ And: ‘Very, very special really; very proud.’ For the entire item Blur played in the background emotively imploring, ‘Yes, it really, really, really could happen.’ Finally, as the coverage concluded, the Special Olympics Leicester logo was displayed, including the message ‘Congratulations from ITV Central Tonight’, thus establishing the broadcaster as a rather humbled Games fan, rather than a neutral media partner.

Representations of Special Olympics athletes

How did the television coverage of the Games typically represent people with learning disabilities as athletes? This took a number of (interrelated) forms: general references to people with a learning disability; reports on Special Olympics athletes; and interviews with, and images of, athletes. There was frequent and consistent use in the TV coverage of the term ‘learning disabilities’ or ‘learning disabled’ (16 times). Initially, though, on the BBC, the term ‘learning difficulties’ was employed on its early broadcasts (BBC, 25–7 July). It can be argued that this repeated invocation of difference and ‘disability’ serves to create an area of tension around the labelling of those involved. If people with learning disabilities are to be regarded as ‘normal’ members of a diverse community then, to a certain extent at least, regularly referring to athletes as ‘them’ or by defining competitors by their disability gives out contradictory signals and may reinforce dominant ideas about segregation. On the other hand, it has also been argued that omitting the disability reference in media coverage may promulgate the erroneous belief that impairment is not central to the athlete’s life and identity (Hughes and Patterson, 1997). Undoubtedly, some of the Games coverage reflected and compounded aspects of these complex tensions. At the opening ceremony, for example, the actor Talip Tahil was interviewed for ITV, and he said:

It’s a very big event for them [people with learning disabilities] and absolute congratulations to them for their preparation and their hard work. And I hope they all have a good time and, really, they’re all winners. They’re all triumphant that they are participating, so I really wish them all the best. (ITV, 25 July)

Nevertheless, there was also a certain educative element to the TV coverage, with frequent reference to what learning disabilities meant and specific (if rather sweeping) assumptions about the impact of Special Olympics, and how people with learning disabilities were challenging existing barriers:

For many of these two-and-a-half thousand athletes, it’s the biggest event of their lives. All of them have learning difficulties; some can’t read or write, others have autism like [local athlete] from Hinckley and Leicestershire. Around a decade ago he wouldn’t even leave the house. Now he’s helped co-host the Opening Ceremony. (BBC, 27 July)

Now, the 2009 Special Olympic Games got under way in Leicester this weekend and for seven days the city will play host to thousands of athletes with learning disabilities, such as autism and Down’s syndrome. (ITV, 27 July)

Other ‘awareness’ issues were explored through ‘news’ coverage of the preparations made by featured athletes, set against their medical issues. Kellie Brabham, a judo player from Leicester, was one such athlete. It was explained that Kellie had Lennox Gastaut syndrome, a form of epilepsy, and that she also had balance problems. A badminton player who had been born with no fingers, was described as ‘autistic’ and it was reported that he had had numerous operations (ITV, 29 July). However, this sort of material was pretty much the limit to any kind of informed TV discussion about learning disability as a medical condition. It could be argued that these particular features were reflective of the nature of local television news because, although set in a sporting context, these medical issues were routinely constructed within a discourse of ‘brave’ individuals challenging their own trying personal circumstances (Negrine and Eyre, 1998: 44–5).

The aspect of the Games coverage that was liable to leave the biggest impression on the viewing public was selected interviews with Special Olympics athletes. ITV’s Gareth Owen confirmed later that interviews with athletes were designed to complement Central Tonight’s overall coverage, which aimed:

to tell inspiring stories of achievement. While the event as a spectacle was important [for Central Tonight], we were more interested in hearing from the athletes telling their own stories. With this in mind we identified a number of competitors as ‘profiled athletes’ from the different regions and followed them from training and preparation at home, through to the opening ceremony, the day of competition and hopefully the medals podium.

However, it was clear that there was no formalized policy on interviewing athletes. On this issue Owen confirmed that:

All reporters and producers agreed that we should approach coaches, team leaders and chaperones before the athletes. We asked them who would be willing and able to talk to us. We never went straight to the athlete. If a request for an interview was declined, we would not force the issue and we would respect that decision.

It could be argued that this approach reflects the wider public perception that athletes with learning disabilities are passive, but it also clearly took into account the nature of an athlete’s disability. As a consequence, there was an emphasis on interviewing athletes who were deemed by broadcasters to be ‘characters’ and who had ‘outgoing’ personalities and thus reflected how the media generally constructs its sports reports. Interviews usually involved the ‘more aesthetically pleasing’ classifications of disability: articulate, mainly young, less severely disabled competitors (Grey-Thompson, 2001).

A number of these were conducted ‘live’. To what degree athletes made ‘good’ interviewees was largely dependent on selection, the skill of the interviewer and the extent and nature of the disability concerned. The last point was also a determining factor in who was chosen for interview. Importantly, in terms of wider representations of learning disability, it perhaps distorted the overall picture concerning the very wide range of disabilities catered for within the Games. A footballer, Andrew Bull for the West Midlands, was particularly articulate on-screen. He was perfectly able to ruminate on the experience of discrimination, as well as projecting a powerful ‘can do’ attitude regarding people with learning disabilities. Asked about taking part in the Games he said:

It’s one of the best feelings of our lives. You’re watching people in all abilities, playing football doing something that wouldn’t be allowed usually, know what I mean, like? People discriminate [against] people with disability. ‘We’ve done this, we can do this.’ (ITV, 28 July)

So, notwithstanding the ‘happy, smiley’ image being projected by television, the Games athletes were also regularly depicted as people who took their sport seriously, reflecting aspects of the prevalent ‘mixed’ style of reporting. That they enjoyed themselves was clear enough, but many athletes were also very competitive. Indeed, many of the SOL events were overseen by highly qualified officials from national governing bodies and conducted as at elite, professional sport. But at least some of the TV coverage of the 2009 Games bordered – and crossed the border – into the easy rhetoric of the supercilious or patronizing. It would be wrong to underestimate the difficulties for journalists in striking a professional balance here between framing such interviews and the conventional demands of reporting sport. They had little preparatory experience or training in discussing learning disability issues or of interviewing people with varying degrees and types of disability. For example, after a rather stalling exchange with ‘Matthew’, an equestrian rider, in which the athlete said simply, ‘We are the best’, the ITV interviewer merely echoed the claim with a slightly condescending: ‘Well done, well said. “We are the best.” Well done.’ One exchange on ITV (27 July) with a very young female athlete was conducted in a similar vein and managed to be simultaneously both demeaning and banal:

Gareth Owen:

I’m joined by a few of the competitors. Here is Sophie. You’ve come all the way from Sunderland haven’t you?

Sophie:

Yes.

GO:

How are you getting on? Having fun?

Sophie:

Yes

GO:

What’s your sport?

Sophie:

Judo.

GO:

And how have you’ve been getting on?

Sophie:

Very well.

GO:

In fact, what’s that around your neck there?

Sophie:

It’s a silver medal.

GO:

A silver medal! Did you just win that today?

Sophie:

Yes [she shows the medal]

GO:

You must be very proud.

Sophie:

Yes.

In this case, the jarring nature of the interview was perhaps dictated almost as much by the athlete’s young age as it was by her disability. It further highlighted the unique nature of the Special Olympics, which not only encompasses a wide range of disabilities but also allows children to compete against adults.

The families’ story

Perhaps the most emotive reporting was from the Motor Activity Training Programme (MATP) event for people with very serious disabilities, which was covered by the BBC (29 July). It featured Laurie Taylor, a severely disabled female ten-pin bowler, from Leicester, and this example par excellence highlighted television’s emphasis on ‘human interest’ stories around the Games. It was explained that Laurie – shown in a wheelchair tipping a bowling ball down a chute – had, ‘severe cerebral palsy. She can’t walk or talk and finds eating very difficult – but that wasn’t going to stop her from picking up a medal in the ten-pin bowling.’ It was reported that, ‘Laurie lost her dad three years ago, so this was a moment her mum wasn’t going to miss.’ This commentary was accompanied by images of her tearful mother (Ellen) taking photographs of Laurie wearing her medal and later giving her daughter a kiss. Mrs Taylor added, through tears: ‘I can’t put it into words. I really can’t put it into words. It’s just amazing; so, so proud of her. I just can’t believe it. It’s incredible.’ The reporter then linked this moving (and, arguably, rather exploitative) exchange with the central participatory ethos of the Special Olympics: that in the context of sport the Games ‘are unique’. After this report was concluded, its poignancy and wider meaning – located within the framework of highly familiar and comforting discourses about gender, the family and parenting – was reinforced by the overt emotionality of the male and female BBC studio presenters:

Sports Presenter:

Awwh. Well done to Laurie, she’s got us all welling up in the studio. Hasn’t she, her and her mum?’

Anchor (Female):

Yes, she certainly has.

Anchor (Male):

Could a mum be any prouder?

Anchor (Female):

No, not at all, and well deserved it was as well.

The same report was featured on the late evening local BBC news and the presenter’s comment was also a similarly poignant: ‘Awwh’. Reports of this nature also highlighted what was, perhaps predictably, missing from the television Games coverage: any wider structural context for discussions about learning disability, an absence that reflects the nature of local news reporting more generally. ‘Human interest’ stories and the courageous battles of individual athletes and their families always trumped any consideration of a wider, possibly more acute and analytical, perspective. While there was frequent reference to the disability of athletes, the issue of learning disability and the wider ‘condition’ of the learning disabled was rarely, if at all, explicitly discussed in terms of its fundamental social, economic and political implications, especially in relation to questions of access, resources and discrimination. If it occurred at all, this wider disability context was implied – albeit rather weakly. There was also very little reference in the coverage to the social and medical provision for people with learning disabilities. Neither was there – perhaps surprisingly considering their news potential and their prominent role in Special Olympics – extended coverage of the daily role of families and/or carers, or indeed the lives of athletes outside the Games. Implicitly projecting competing athletes as relatively independent, ‘normal’ people – at least in this very limited sense – conspired to make the subject of learning disability as naturalized and as ‘apolitical’ as possible.

Some conclusions

How should we assess the television coverage of the Special Olympics in Leicester in 2009? Much of it, we would contend, reproduced and reinforced dominant discourses concerning people with learning disabilities: that these are largely ‘sympathetic’, normatively passive, dependent people who deal bravely with their impairments and rely profoundly on the assistance of others. This event also ticked many of the boxes for the preferred representational style of local television: Special Olympics was thus presented as a de-materialized, apolitical, joyful and compassionate ‘human interest’ story about devoted family support systems and individuals bravely overcoming disadvantage.

However, local television coverage did promote some increased public awareness of people with learning disabilities and of their involvement in sport. This awareness-raising was identified in public surveys and was almost certainly greater in Leicester due to its role as host and the additional promotional work undertaken there (Barton et al., 2011: 193–222). In addition, regional television coverage was extended through the national network, raising important questions about what perceptions of people with learning disabilities were most likely to be formed by viewers. However, an analysis of Dyer’s (1988) final dimension of representation – what the audience makes of such television coverage – is beyond the scope of the current article.

The professional ideologies of journalists and the ‘neutral’ position of the Games organizers meant that no specialist media preparation on how to cover learning disability issues was deemed necessary or desirable for the 2009 Games. This might legitimately suggest that these media and sport specialists planned to treat Special Olympics ‘just like any other sport’. But we have also shown that this was certainly not the case in practice. Indeed, Special Olympics athletes (and the event itself) were often represented in contradictory ways, reflecting some of the complex tensions inherent in the event itself, and also the very real problems involved in adequately ‘framing’ the Games for television consumption. In the event, athletes (and the Games) were depicted as both ‘serious’ and ‘fun-loving’ individuals who were invariably ‘defying the odds’, and using assertions about the resolutely positive impact that sport could – and has – played in their lives. The enduring positivity of the coverage meant that some of the familiar rhetoric about the dangers of commercialization, over-competitiveness and cheating, which regularly feature in news coverage of professional sport was largely absent. However, counter-intuitively perhaps, TV coverage of the SOL Games also highlighted just how many Special Olympics athletes displayed many of the same hopes and emotions about sport as did other, committed non-disabled, athletes.

Like other forms of mediated sport, the television coverage of the 2009 Special Olympics was ‘saturated with ideas, values, images and discourses which at times reflect, construct, naturalize, legitimize, challenge and even reconstitute attitudes which permeate wider society’ (Boyle and Haynes, 2009: 107). However, people with learning disabilities are among the most marginalized and ‘invisible’ groups within developed societies. They have little effective public voice and unlike, for example, many people with a physical disability, they are often unable to articulate positions of opposition or to campaign on specific issues concerning questions of resources and provision. In this sense, it could be plausibly argued that, while SOGB lacked effective leverage, possibly it did ‘miss a trick’ in not attempting to mould and mobilize the television coverage of SOL 2009 more effectively. Alternatively – and whatever its drawbacks – television at least briefly drew public awareness to a group that is otherwise usually ignored, even if it is more difficult to contend that this ostensibly supportive coverage of Special Olympics actually challenged wider perceptions about learning disabilities. Our research does suggest, however, that this new relationship between Special Olympics and television in 2009 may have had some potential impact on the professionals involved in its complex and often conflicted televisual presentation. As ITV Games presenter Gareth Owen later remarked:

Yes, I feel that [the Games] did change my attitude. So much of what we see and hear about people with learning disabilities is focused on what CAN’T be done, but for a week last year I saw what CAN be done, and it was real eye-opener.

Did coverage of the 2009 Games help establish some of the wider ‘political’ and social issues concerning learning disability on either the regional or national agenda? These are complex questions, but, given the broadcaster remit, it is perhaps unsurprising that the Games coverage produced no explicit discussion of these important matters. Coverage of SOL 2009 raises the point we made earlier, in any case, concerning the limited – but exaggerated – capacity of sport to effect societal or attitudinal change. Finally, we might add that it is also unsurprising that journalists should struggle to establish an ‘appropriate’ register for reporting a complex sporting and cultural event like Special Olympics. This is mainly because of their own professional ideologies, the nature of news values around sport, prevailing stereotypes about disability and the public ‘invisibility’ of people with learning disabilities. But perhaps it also reflects more deep-rooted difficulties. After all, even academics working in the field continue to disagree profoundly on some basic issues, including who should be eligible to conduct research in the disability arena (Macbeth, 2010) and, more importantly perhaps, on exactly how disability sport should best be reported and televised (Smith and Thomas, 2005: 58).

Footnotes

Notes

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