David Oaks Trashes ABC’s Mad Pride Program
Most of you know that ABC’s “Primetime” did a program on Mad Pride a few weeks ago and did the usual mainstream media thing when dealing with alternative approaches to mental health care and played the violence card. (Liz Spikol and I trashed the program here.) MindFreedom’s founder and one of the biggest proponents of Mad Pride David Oaks was interviewed on the program but was out of the country when it aired, so he’s only recently viewed it and offered some thoughts on it all.
In classic form, he points out that if ABC is going to tar Mad Priders with violence, then this is about how they’d handle other social movements.
“Let me try to find some parallels, as inexact as that might be:
“* Islamic pride? It would be as if you talked with an Islamic leader at length about their pride in being Muslim, and the leader asked if you were going to focus on suicide bombers, and you replied no, no, no… but your piece ended up with a lurid focus on suicide bombers, with slow motion of bombs going off.
“* Gay pride? It would be as if you were doing an early piece on Gay Pride, promised the activists a positive portrayal, and instead focused on lurid and detailed tales of homosexual child molestation for much of the show, including weeping parents of the children.
“* Black pride? Not at all to compare ourselves to Rosa Parks, but it would be as if you did one of the first pieces on Rosa Parks, but instead focused on instances of where African American youth had beaten up or killed bus drivers, complete with an interview with a slain bus driver’s widow.”
Oaks is dead right about these parallels.
The show’s producer sure flunked the classic Journalism 101 test because when you are comparing two things–Mad Pride and violence–then you need some evidence to back up your assertions. Yet the show provided no evidence of anyone in the Mad Pride movement being violent. Epic fail.
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