Not Worth Keeping Alive? News framing of physician-assisted suicide in the United States and Great Britain

Abstract

This essay seeks to analyse and understand the news framing of a major issue for disabled people in the late twentieth century - physician-assisted suicide. We argue that news frames within the coverage of physician-assisted suicide present narratives that ignore or devalue disability issues. The US disability rights movement has created an oppositional frame to mainstream media presentations, arguing that physician-assisted suicide has been "presented" to many disabled people as a way of self-termination in accordance with a dominant cultural belief that disabled people are "not worth keeping alive". For this study, we analysed reports in two elite newspapers, the New York Times in the United States, and The Guardian in Great Britain during 1996-1998. Our analysis identifies six narrative frames in news stories about physician-assisted suicide.