Anthony Robles

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/2011-03-21-anthony-robles-retires_N.htm

This particular piece of journalism is important because only once does the author actually mention the fact that Anthony Robles is a wrestler who has one leg. If you were to read the entire article minus that sentence, you would have almost no idea that there was anything unique about Anthony at all. As we learned in our recent class session focusing on "disabilities", often any type of journalism focusing on people with some type of mental or physical disability either seeks to call to attention how miraculous it is that someone with a disability could have had such an accomplishment or it seeks to glorify the disability as the reason why this person has succeeded.

The author of this article remarks only a few times about anything physical at all when mentioning Robles, and aims to focus more on the tangible accomplishments this young man has achieved rather than note that the reason why these achievements are noteworthy are because he deviates from the "norm". Robles' story is uplifting, inspirational and motivational to people of all walks of life and is made to appear no more or less significant because Robles lacks one of his legs. If this article had chosen to focus on how Robles' achievements were more significant because he has only one leg, projected Robles as a wounded warrior and spoke more on the potential struggles Robles faced growing up with his disability, reading the article would elicit an entirely different reaction. If journalists chose to approach all matters of gender, race, culture, etc., with this type of neutrality, I believe that the media would be a much less opinionated and biased part of culture.