{"id":6824,"date":"2009-02-24T16:08:07","date_gmt":"2009-02-24T23:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6824"},"modified":"2009-02-24T16:08:07","modified_gmt":"2009-02-24T23:27:55","slug":"some-parents-complain-that-disabled-tv-host-scares-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=6824","title":{"rendered":"Some parents complain that disabled TV host "scares children""},"content":{"rendered":"

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From The Independent<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n

Disparaging comments by adults about a children\u2019s presenter have led to an angry backlash in support of Cerrie Burnell, the 29-year-old CBeebies host who was born missing the lower section of her right arm. One man said that he would stop his daughter from watching the BBC children\u2019s channel because Burnell would give his child nightmares.<\/p>\n

Parents even called the broadcaster to complain…\u00a0 some of the vitriolic comments on the \u201cGrown Up\u201d section of the channel\u2019s website were so nasty that they had to be removed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it just me, or does anyone else think the new woman presenter on CBeebies may scare the kids because of her disability?\u201d wrote one adult on the CBeebies website. Other adults claimed that their children were asking difficult questions as a result.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Children asking questions! Horrible, horrible! It must be stopped!<\/p>\n

There is some good news here: Many other parents have Burnell’s back.<\/p>\n

…other parents and carers labelled the remarks as disgraceful, writing in support of Burnell and setting up a \u201cfight disability prejudice\u201d page on the social networking site Facebook. […]
\nBurnell, who described her first television presenting role as a \u201cdream job\u201d, has also appeared in EastEnders and Holby City and has been feted for performances in the theatre while also worked as a teaching assistant at a special needs school in London. She also has a four-year-old child. \u201cI think the negative comments from those few parents are indicative of a wider problem of disabled representation in the media as a whole, which is why it\u2019s so important for there to be more disabled role models in every area of the media,\u201d she said in response yesterday. […]<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some way it is a pretty sad commentary on the way society is now and that both parents and children see few examples of disabled people. The sooner children are exposed to disability in mainstream education the better,\u201d said Mark Shrimpton at Radar, the UK\u2019s largest disability campaigning organisation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even if a child is disturbed by seeing Burnell’s arm, so what? It’s up to the parents to explain to the child that all people are different — not up to the BBC to fire their host so that parents are spared having to parent their children.<\/p>\n

That said, I think we know the core issue here isn’t frightened children — it’s prejudiced adults. As one disabled child care worker said in the comments to the article, “I found the children, once they’d asked about my arm, quickly moved on and became more helpful and considerate of my disability… Some of the adults I have encountered however have been downright rude.”<\/p>\n

Thanks to Elkins for pointing this out to me. Elkins also recommends reading the comments at The Independent, “both for outrage and reassurance,” and adds that “The original comments on the CBeebies forums have all now been deleted. I guess that makes sense on a forum that little kids might read, but it’s somewhat of a disappointment.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From The Independent: Disparaging comments by adults about a children\u2019s presenter have led to an angry backlash in support of Cerrie Burnell, the 29-year-old CBeebies host who was born missing the lower section of her right arm. One man said … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disabled-rights-issues","category-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}