On October 19th, public television's Frontline aired "Prisoners of Silence", a program about facilitated communication and its use with children who have autism and are nonverbal. Producer Jon Palfreman spent almost a year investigating the technique, interviewing, among others, TASH member Doug Biklen, who pioneered FC at Syracuse University after working with Rosemary Crossley in Australia.
What could have been an informative and unbiased documentary examining the pros and cons of this controversial subject, in producer Palfreyman's hands becomes a distorted "proof" of the technique's failure. From the beginning, facilitated communication is spoken of in the past tense - it is abundantly, clear that Palfreman has dispensed with any doubt that it works and goes out of his way to reinforce this conviction. (In fact, in personal correspondence to Biklen, Palfreyman likens the "phenomena" of facilitated communication to cold fusion, patterning and telepathy, saying that people who still believe in them are regarded as "cranks, relegated to the margins of intellectual life.")
Until unbiased examination of facilitated communication is pursued and reported, the inaccuracies, omissions and distortions of the Frontline program will no doubt leave many unanswered questions in many viewers' minds. TASH has asked Doug Biklen to comment on the coverage.
TASH Newsletter Editor: Now that the Frontline program has aired nationally, what is your reaction to its fairness in reporting, or rather the slant of its coverage?
Doug Biklen: Naturally, I was appalled with it. Jon Palfreman, the Frontline producer, revealed a bias that was extraordinary. Sadly, unless you know a great deal about the national debate over facilitated communication and about the method, it might be hard to recognize that bias. To give TASH readers a sense of its depth, let me just mention a few main points:
Frontline never showed the progress that some individuals are making toward independence. Indeed, Sharisa Kochmeister is shown in the program, but she isn't typing. Recently, viewers saw the same girl on CBS' How'd They Do That?, and Sharisa now types completely independently. She has gone from being diagnosed as severely retarded to demonstrating quite normal intelligence.
Frontline told its viewers that autism involves brain damage, but failed to interview the leading pediatric neurologists whose work demonstrates that the anomalies are subcortical, not in the cortex where higher order thinking occurs.
The program failed to note that Rosemary Crossley, myself, and others who have been doing research on facilitation have long discussed issues of facilitator influence and the importance of helping people work toward independence.
They decided to show footage only of people looking away from the keyboard, even though we have been clear from the start (as I noted in my article in the Harvard Educational Review, 1990) that looking at the keyboard is a requirement of the method. Frontline does not explain that someone who may have difficulty with this can improve on looking and can achieve this skill; success with this goes hand-in-hand with achieving independence.
Frontline mentioned only negative studies, systematically not letting the public know about the studies that support the finding that facilitation is an effective alternative means of communication. They distinctly avoided reporting the results from our observational research.
False claims were made on the program, stating that facilitated communication is invariably perfectly spelled and grammatically correct - we have not found that or reported as such.
Frontline told the story of a case in which a person purportedly made an abuse allegation, but did not report the procedure that we have recommended for over a year for sorting out such claims.
There was no mention of the parents who discovered the method on their own, and who found that their children could type independently (see Margaret Eastham's 1992 book Silent Words) or semi-independent typing (see particularly Oppenheim's 1974 book Teaching Methods for Autistic Children).
Frontline made no mention of the theory behind facilitation (i.e. apraxia).
There was no identification of Dr. Arthur Schawlow as a Nobel Prize Winner in Physics - as someone who knows a great deal about science and who is very critical of the recent studies that claim to discredit facilitation. Frontline failed to air his criticism of those studies.
It was clear from the beginning that the Frontline producer, Jon Palfreman, intended to create a biased, highly prejudicial program. He succeeded.
Editor. What do you think motivated Frontline?
Biklen: I'm not certain. And actually, it probably doesn't matter much what motivated the program's producer. What really does matter is the effect such a show could have on people with disabilities.
Editor. What will it take for facilitated communication to gain acceptance?
Biklen: As more people type independently or close to it (i.e., with just a hand on the shoulder), as more people prove their communication abilities by conveying information not known to their those studies. facilitators but which is accurate, and as more people demonstrate distinctive communicative styles, people around them will have to listen.
In other words it will just take time. Of course, additional research, other news programs that are more objective, and lots of organizing by people with disabilities, their parents and friends, and continuing dialogue will help too. And I am sure that some people will begin to make the right of expression a legal rights issue.