Thanks for this one, Joe. I copied the article and sent it over to
the acb list. I hope we get a ton of protest calls, letters and
emails to Anderson Cooper and the "Fair Journalists" that CBS has
bought and paid for. I have always had a problem with 60 Minutes'
method of raising issues but seldom following up, and almost never
providing even a hint of possible solutions. I used to watch 60
Minutes faithfully every Sunday evening, just to get my "awful news"
fix. But as the CBS slid from pretending to give us the news, to
providing us with entertainment, I went back to listening to Public
Radio until they began a "Right Hand" slide. Now I watch Thom Hartman
on RT TV, and listen to some of his radio program, and Democracy Now,
and Richard Wolff, and Chris Hedges, and similar programs.
Alternative Radio is worth hunting down, too.
It isn't that they mostly lean "Left", which they certainly do, but it
is because they all give information that can, if we encourage it,
stimulate the brain into exploring what is going on behind the scenes.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/6/16, joe harcz Comcast <joeharcz@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
60 Minutes Slams ADA, Boosts Trump Agenda
by Law Office of Lainey Feingold on December 6, 2016
Linda Dardarian, Anderson Cooper and Lainey Feingold
Linda Dardarian, Anderson Cooper and Lainey Feingold
On December 4th, 60 Minutes aired a
13 minute story on “drive by lawsuits” under the Americans with Disabilities
Act.
The segment, which followed a puff piece on Paul Ryan, questioned lawsuits
filed by three lawyers, two of them being sued by their disabled clients
for
malpractice.
Anderson Cooper, the show’s host, did not mention a single ADA lawsuit he
thought was valid, a single ADA lawyer he believed scrupulous. He did not
interview
a single disabled person whose ADA claim he found to be meritorious. No
disabled activists were interviewed — though a few, as described here, had
their
(partial) images used in the background footage.
This was puzzling. In June 2015 Linda Dardarian and I spent hours with
Anderson Cooper and his crew for a 60 Minutes piece about the 25th
anniversary of
the ADA. The interview with Anderson Cooper went well. Cooper and his staff
told us that they admired the work we do, and that they thought it was
great
that ADA enforcement was making the world more accessible to people with
disabilities.
After our interview we spent hours with the film crew demonstrating
accessible technology the ADA had achieved. Experienced film makers
carefully set up
their high end equipment to get the perfect shot. The film crew came back
weeks later to take footage of members of the disabled community doing
things
that ADA enforcement makes possible.
The piece never ran. The ADA’s 25th anniversary came and went on July 26,
2015 without a word from the producers. When 2016 rolled around, we figured
the
piece was dead. We were disappointed, but know that media stories don’t run
for any number of reasons.
Then, less than a month after Trump’s election, a ghost of the ADA story was
resuscitated into the piece viewers saw on December 4. Two hours before it
ran, one of the producers called us. “I just wanted you to know you won’t be
in the piece,” he told me. “We decided to go with a piece just about the
drive-by
lawsuits.”
Why would 60 Minutes decide to run a negative story about the Americans with
Disabilities Act now, eighteen months after filming? Why craft a story that
left out hours of film and interviews about effective ADA advocacy. There
can be only one explanation.
Someone at 60 Minutes wanted an anti-ADA piece to support Donald Trump’s
anti-regulatory, anti-ADA, and anti-disability agenda.
The pro-ADA piece that 60 Minutes Killed
The story that 60 Minutes initially planned to run had a very different
message. Our hour plus interview with Anderson Cooper was wide ranging,
covering
ADA enforcement work we have done with our clients for more than twenty
years.
We talked, for example, about Talking ATMs achieved through
Structured Negotiation,
the alternative dispute resolution process that is the subject of my new
book. If you look closely, you’ll see a picture of a Talking ATM at minute
12:53
of the video.
That shot was taken while the 60 Minutes camera crew spent time with Jessie
Lorenz, a blind activist in San Francisco who was involved in the
negotiation.
We encouraged 60 Minutes not only to shoot the background footage known as
b-roll with our clients, but to interview these advocates as well. Lorenz,
Executive
Director of Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco and a single
mom who has been featured in a
Facebook promotional video,
does not appear in the show.
Anderson Cooper and his team were also very interested in the work that the
American Council of the Blind has done in Structured Negotiation to
convince
national pharmacies to offer
talking prescription labels.
Back in Linda’s office, the 60 Minutes camera team spent hours filming the
ScripTalk talking label system
with a high tech robotic camera. Because of ADA enforcement through
Structured Negotiation, this system is available through Caremark, Humana,
Rite Aid,
and other U.S. pharmacies.
My picture of that filming appears in this post, along with the picture
taken of Anderson Cooper standing between Linda and me. We knew that those
hours
of capturing the perfect shot would result in a few seconds of on-camera
time, and that our engaging interview would be edited down to just a few
minutes
or less. We didn’t realize that the entire subject of ADA enforcement
through Structured Negotiation would be left on the cutting room floor.
Which Lawyers? Which Lawsuits?
Structured Negotiation is just one way disabled people and their lawyers
enforce the ADA, and Linda and I were not the only disability rights lawyers
left
out of the reimagined ADA piece on 60 Minutes. Lawsuits have played a
critical role in fulfilling the civil rights law’s promise. The 60 Minutes
producers
were given names of lawyers across the country who work to enforce the ADA
through lawsuits, administrative complaints, and other strategies.
The national
Disability Rights Bar Association
is comprised of private and non-profit lawyers who represent disabled people
using a host of strategies, court cases a valuable tool in our tool boxes.
But Anderson Cooper and his team chose not to put a single DRBA lawyer on
camera. Instead, the show featured three lawyers — two being sued for
malpractice,
one that was sanctioned for what a court found to be unethical behavior.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers have long been a target of the right in the United
States. I guess 60 Minutes thought another hit piece was needed as political
power
in the country is shifting.
Disabled People as Dupes, Not Activists
The 60 Minutes episode didn’t just leave out the nation’s disability rights
lawyers. One of the most hurtful aspects of the 60 Minutes video was its
portrayal
of disabled people and ADA issues generally. The disabled people Anderson
Cooper chose to feature in his story were presented as dupes of
unscrupulous
lawyers. People who only became involved in ADA enforcement when lawyers
contacted them.
Like other civil rights laws, the Americans with Disabilities Act was
enacted because disabled people took to the streets to demand their rights.
Chained
themselves to busses demanding transportation, filled the halls of congress
with stories of exclusion and a thirst for independence. Today, 26 years
after
passage of the ADA, the disabled community is stronger than ever, with more
grassroots organizations and social media skills than ever before.
Not only was this activism nowhere in the 60 Minutes story, but 60 Minutes
used b-roll footage of activists who believed they were contributing to a
fair
25th anniversary story.
Ingrid Tischer, Development Director at the
Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund,
is one of those advocates who we encouraged 60 Minutes to contact. Tischer’s
body, but not her face or head, can be seen in the footage running during
the
story.
“How dare you slip footage of me from the Ed Roberts Campus (ERC), a
state-of-the-art example of built universal design, without any
contextualization,”
Tischer posted on Facebook. “I don’t appreciate being background scenery for
your propaganda.” She shared more when we spoke after the episode ran:
I was gut-punched by Anderson Cooper’s segment because it did indeed
spotlight fraud — the fraud of right-wing propaganda masquerading as
journalism. Where
was the point of view of ordinary disabled Americans — like me — who could
speak to the righteous and still-inadequate enforcement of our most basic
civil
rights through the ADA? I trusted Anderson Cooper and 60 Minutes enough to
shoot B-roll with them. But I guess a woman going about her job, her life,
thanks
to the rule of law was just too damn accurate and fair.—
Ingrid Tischer,
writer and disability advocate
Erin Lauridsen, a blind San Francisco advocate and technology expert is
another person who appears (from the back) on the episode. Lauridsen
crossing the
street with her guide dog is the last shot of the whole story. “I feel
sick,” she told me, “that my image was used in such a biased and harmful
piece.”
In June 2015 when 60 Minutes asked us for names of people to film for the
episode we thought they were creating, the producer who contacted us was
excited.
They wanted lots of shots of improvements to technology and the built
environment attributable to enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities
Act. “It’s
a real opportunity I think,” one of the producers wrote me in a June 5, 2015
email, “to educate everyone about how this way of thinking about design can
have a big impact.”
When they dusted off the ADA story after the election and decided to twist
it into an anti-ADA piece, someone at 60 Minutes decided that educating the
public
about the value of the ADA no longer mattered.
The hit-piece that 60 Minutes Aired
Minutes 5:35 – 6:00 of the 60 Minutes Episode are made to order for Trump’s
anti-regulatory agenda. First there is a picture of the ADA Standards for
Accessible
Design. Cooper tells listeners that the standards comprise 275 pages. He
then goes on to mention various aspects of the built environment covered by
the
standards with plenty of images but zero context.
Cooper shows a light switch, for example, with no mention that if mounted
too high, a wheelchair rider cannot turn on a light when entering a room. He
shows
carpeting and pooh poohs regulations governing pile height, failing to
explain that a manual wheelchair user will be unable to maneuver on
improperly designed
flooring.
The ADA Standards for Accessible Design were not crafted out of thin air.
They are based upon the experiences of disabled people and empirical
studies.
In many instances they represent compromise; some disabled people will still
be unable to use aspects of the built environment that comply with the
standards.
The Standards for Accessible Design make the ADA a reality in the built
environment. 60 Minutes and Anderson Cooper should be ashamed to ignore
their true
meaning to feed the Trump anti-regulatory agenda.
The December 4 story was tailor made for another overlooked aspect of the
Trump agenda — limiting enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Trump properties have been sued for ADA violations
many times, most recently less than three months ago. And Republican
Senator
Jeff Flake from Arizona gleefully tweeted
that his “bill stops frivolous #ADA lawsuits featured on @60Minutes by
giving small businesses a chance to fix problems.”
Although Trump and Flake sparred during the run-up to the election, Flake’s
bill fits neatly into a Trump vision of an unregulated business
environment.
60 Minutes apparently thought that vision needed a boost with its biased and
unfair story about ADA enforcement.
Lainey Feingold is a disability rights lawyer and author. Her book,
Structured Negotiation, A Winning Alternative to Lawsuits, tells the story
of twenty
years of disability rights advocacy on accessible technology issues using a
dispute resolution method focused on win-win solutions and relationship
building.
More information on her website at
http://lflegal.com
or follow her on
Source:
http://www.beyondchron.org/60-minutes-slams-ada-boosts-trump-agenda/
