Abstract: As an important part of the Olympic Movement, the Paralympic Games are not only a sport event but also a social event communicating the new disability concept and promoting disability social inclusion. The media plays an important role in constructing news discourse and greatly influences the public perception of disability. Using the text analysis and comparative research method, this article analyzed news reports from the People's Daily between 1984 to 2018, to study the construction and development of the news discourse on the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games, and to explore the different disability models used in news discourse. The study finds that the People's Daily's reports on the Paralympic Games have gone through three different stages of news discourse: “handicapped,” “diseased,” and “disabled,” which are influenced by different disability models such as charity model, medical model, and social model. Based on the latest agenda from the United Nations and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), in order to build a more civilized and equal society, it is important to combine different disability models to promote social goals of sports and to construct more diverse news discourse in the reporting of the Beijing Winter Paralympic Games in 2022.

Key words: People's Daily, Paralympic Games, News Discourse, Disability Model, United Nations