National Center on Disability and Journalism

The attack and kidnapping of a man with mental disabilities in Chicago—the act streamed over Facebook Live—has spurred a host of new media reports on violence and disability over the past week.

Here’s some of the reporting:

• CNN: Facebook video reminder of violence faced by disabled Americans “But while the nature of the remarks on the video have unsurprisingly sparked much discussion about race, Trump and the live streaming of crimes, something important risks being overlooked: the chilling, everyday, truth that to be disabled in America is to be at greater risk of violence.” Read more
• The New York Times: Beating of Disabled Teenager Highlights a Crime That Often Goes Unpunished
  “Violence against people with disabilities is far more common than most people realize, advocates have said, and frequently goes undetected or is not taken seriously.” Read more
• AP: Hate-crime charges filed in attack on mentally disabled man
  “Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said investigators initially concluded that the 18-year-old man was singled out because he has “special needs,” not because he was white. But authorities later said the charges resulted from both the suspects’ use of racial slurs and their references to the victim’s disability.” Read more
• Vanity Fair: Should the Media Have Promoted the Chicago Brutality Video?
  “Now, with Facebook, the “well, it’s already out there on social media, we can’t ignore it” rationalization often takes hold. Thus, there were a great many folks who used portions of the video.” Read more
• Los Angeles Times: The reaction to a viral Facebook video of a hate crime tells us something about postelection America
  “Police say they think the victim, whose parents had earlier reported him as missing, was attacked because of his disability, not because of his race.” Read more
• The Christian Science Monitor: Behind Facebook Live attack, unseen scourge of crime against disabled
  “Among all the categories of disability, those with cognitive disabilities experience the highest rates of violent crime.” Read more
• Salon: Don’t let racists fool you: The Chicago kidnapping isn’t about Black Lives Matter. It’s about the violence faced by people with disabilities
  “This incident is a reminder of the violence that people with disabilities experience in everyday life. The young student, whose name has not been published in the press to protect the privacy of his family, has an intellectual disability, which means that his brain processes information differently than the rest of ours.” Read more