Contact: Mike Feazel, 703-281-9188 or 202-872-9200;
mfeazel@warren-news.com
Kathryn Creedy, Institute for Adoption Information, 802-442-2845;
info@adoptioninformationinstitute.org

This press release was distributed by the Institute for Adoption Information (I-A-I) on behalf of Accurate Adoption Reporting. I-A-I participated in the drafting of this letter and AAR has our full support. AAR founders are currently working on I-A-I's Journalists' Guide to Adoption, due out in 2003.

GROUPS SEEK ACCURATE ADOPTION REPORTING

Washington, DC -- More than 100 adoption groups, professionals and individuals have signed a letter to journalists around the country, urging them to use accurate and sensitive language when reporting about adoption. Among the key issues raised in the letter are that a person's adoption should only be mentioned when it is directly related to the news story, and the inappropriateness of using terms such as "abandoned" and "unwanted" when referring to children available for adoption.

"Through their word choices, even well-meaning journalists can and have inadvertently conveyed the misconception that adoptive families are somehow less genuine and permanent, and that people who were adopted ­ and their role in a family ­ remain somehow different," said the letter to journalists sent during November ­ National Adoption Month. "The reality is that adoption is as valid a way of joining a family as birth. A stylebook entry on adoption would help journalists use language that conveys the fact that adoptive families are just like any other, both in law and in loving relationships."

Those who signed the letter felt the effort to convince journalists to use appropriate language is important because at least six million people in the U.S. were adopted into their families and the number of Americans touched by adoption exceeds 100 million. Currently, language used often conveys antiquated and inaccurate attitudes about adoption that affect children and society.

The letter is being sent to the editor of the Associated Press Stylebook, used by journalists throughout the country as their basic guide to writing style, and to the editors of stylebooks used by a wide range of other publications. The signers hope the letter will convince the stylebook editors to add an entry on adoption in stylebooks, which would quickly result in journalists nationwide using more appropriate language when reporting about adoption. A copy of the suggested entry is attached.

The nationwide Accurate Adoption Reporting campaign has already received widespread attention, including a feature in The Los Angeles Times, one of the nation's largest and most-influential newspapers. The article was reprinted in newspapers throughout the United States.

The letter has also generated significant support from prominent groups and individuals within the adoption community. Among the groups and individuals signing are the Institute for Adoption Information, the Center for Adoption Support & Education, Families With Children from China, several authors and publishers of adoption books, adoption agencies and social workers, celebrity adoptive parents such as actor Joe Spano and CBS Senior Vice President Mitch Semel, and dozens of individual adoptive parents.

The letter to editors said journalists need to describe adoption accurately and objectively, but news and feature stories have often employed inaccurate, even sensationalized, language about adoption. For example, many obituaries of Maureen Reagan mentioned that her brother Michael was adopted. The fact that he was adopted 50 years ago was as relevant as information that someone else was born prematurely or by C-section, the letter said. Coverage of the Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman divorce typically described the couple as having "two adopted children." Again, the fact they were adopted is irrelevant. A spokesman for Cruise and Kidman said this kind of language is insulting.