Age of Autism: Time to Rain on the Media Parade

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blessingsx10@... wrote: http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/01/post-1.html01/27/2008TIME TO RAIN ON THE MEDIA PARADEBy Dan OlmstedThe sad state of American journalism's coverage of the autism epidemic ison display today in

tens of millions of Sunday newspapers, probablyincluding yours. Parade magazine's cover story is titled: "With ChildrenStruggling, Parents Ask: Is There Hope for Autism?"Looking out from the cover is a child identified as "Nick Furth, 9, (who)attends a school for autistic children in New Jersey." When I saw that, myjaw dropped all the way to Beijing. This is the same Nick Furth who in May2006 was on the cover for Time magazine's “New Insights Into the HiddenWorld of Autism†(caption: "Nick Furth, 8, of Mine Hill, N.J.").Good heavenly days, as my mother might have put it. Out of thousands andthousands of children with autism, you're telling me Parade couldn't findone other child suitable for its cover? There's a technical term for thisin my journalism dictionary. It's spelled l-a-z-y.In the interest of full disclosure -- and also to make my point -- I needto say that I used to work for Parade's main Sunday

supplement competitor,USA Weekend. Coming from this small universe, I can tell you thesemega-circulation magazines have all the time and money they need to findand photograph anyone they want.Both these photos were taken by the same photographer -- are they even new?I wonder. But here's what really sucks: After putting young Nick on thecover, both Parade and Time drop him like a hot potato. There's no mentionof Nick, his family, his challenges and triumphs, that special school heattends and whether it helps, why his parents think he has autism, whetherliving in New Jersey, the state with the highest autism rate in the world,might conceivably have anything to do with it -- nothing. Two nationalmagazine covers, and he's still a cipher.This is the commoditization of children with autism.I'm sure Nick's parents are proud of their photogenic son’s secondappearance on a major magazine cover, and nothing I have

to say detractsfrom that. But if you're going to put Nick -- or any other sentient beingbeyond a fashion model – on the cover, you need to tell us something aboutthat person for one simple reason: He is a person. What is the implicitmessage if you do not?The cover story itself is not offensive, merely insipid. But inoffensiveinsipidity in the mainstream media is our besetting problem. Everythingfrom the cover line to the last sub-head is a non-committal question withno useful answer in sight. "What Do We Know About Autism? ... Is Autism anEpidemic? ... What is the Best Treatment? ... Do Vaccines Cause Autism? ...Is There Hope?"SEE WEBpage fore more.............. Start the year off right. Easy ways to stay in shape in the new year.

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