In What Ways do Different Mediums of Journalism Portray Homosexuality

In what ways do different mediums of journalism portray homosexuality and homosexual individuals?

It is commonly believed that the aim of journalism is to serve the public. Journalists act as society’s gatekeepers and (generally) adhere to strict guidelines regarding ethics, accuracy, fairness, timeliness and impartiality (Grundy, 2009 pp. 07-10). The word ‘public’ conjures images of the every-day, and with it, the ‘every-peoples’ who we encounter on a day-to-day basis. The public’s views of teachers, businessmen and women, students, refugees, politicians, retail workers, people who are unemployed, people who are homeless and even criminals are largely formed through media representation. Put simply, the media (and individual journalists) have an incredible amount of power when it comes to influencing the views of individuals in society.

Unfortunately, however, there are some aspects of day-to-day life that are not always represented fairly, accurately or even at all. This essay highlights the largely negative and exclusionary portrayal of homosexuality in different mediums of journalism. While I do not believe that an individual should be defined by their sexual preference alone—in the media or in every-day life—there are many situations, as discussed in this essay, where through the media, members of the public are degraded and/or excluded because of their sexuality. This essay aims to highlight the ways in which homosexuality and homosexual individuals are portrayed as shameful, illegal, defamatory, flawed, superficial, and outsiders in certain mediums of journalism around the world. It is important to note, however, that a negative view of homosexuality is far from a universal media viewpoint; this will also be highlighted throughout my argument.

According to Chawansky (2010, p.76) Australian sports journalism ‘typically reflect[s] a heterosexual male experience of sport which can limit and shape what we are able to know about others’ sporting experiences’. She goes on to write that sports reporting by heterosexual male sports journalists is often not inclusive of ‘others’ and reflects a largely heterosexual male sporting experience. This representation of the sporting world rarely includes the mention or praise of homosexual athletes; being ‘gay’ in the sporting world is something that is still largely unaccepted and ‘swept under the rug’ (Chawansky 2010, p. 77). As a journalism lecturer, Chawansky proved her point by performing an activity with her sports journalism students that emphasised the imposed normalcy of heterosexuality in the sporting world.

Chawansky pretended her students were sportswriters who were to cover a local women’s basketball game. She told the students the game’s final score, notable players and other general information about the venue. Afterwards, students got a chance to interview Chawansky who pretended to be a ‘key player’ in the game. Chawansky split the class into two and performed two separate interviews. To group one, she said that her performance was especially important because her boyfriend/male partner was present at the game. She also told the group that she had a bad stomach virus leading up to the match. To group two, she said that her performance was especially important because her girlfriend/female partner was at the game. She also told them that she had a bad stomach virus leading up to the match (Chawansky 2010, p. 77).

What she found was that most students in group one highlighted the fact that her boyfriend was at the match in their reporting. In group two, however, students rarely mentioned that her girlfriend was in attendance at the match and instead focussed on her stomach virus. This activity showed that due to the ‘heteronormative sports reporting the students were accustomed to’, they had unconsciously become conditioned to exclude any mention of homosexuality in their own reporting of a hypothetical sporting event (Chawansky 2010, p. 77). This one-sided reporting gives viewers/readers a very one-sided view of the sporting world and portrays homosexuality as something that should be ignored.

Kian & Anderson (2009, p.808) highlight the extremely negative portrayal of homosexuality in sports journalism through a case study on the media and fellow players’ reactions to US Basketball player John Amaechi’s ‘coming out’ in 2007. Kian and Anderson (2009, p. 811) believe that ‘the extent of homophobia in the sport world is staggering. Boys (in sport) learn early that to be gay, to be suspected of being gay, or even to be unable to prove one’s heterosexual status is not acceptable’. This point was driven-home when, after Amechi made his homosexuality public, South Miami radio station WAXY-AM aired fellow basketballer Tim Hardaway’s comment: ‘I hate gay people, so I let it be known. I don’t like gay people and I don’t like being around gay people. I’m homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States’ (Kian and Anderson 2009, p. 810).

While most major newspaper columnists wrote negatively of Hardaway’s particularly damning and extreme viewpoints regarding homosexuality, Kian & Anderson found that many reporters maintained the idea that ‘the locker room is still no place for gay men’ (Kian and Anderson 2009, p.810). For example, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle voiced his point of view that ‘an openly gay man can’t survive the testosterone-rich, mentally impoverished environment of a pro locker room’. From a further analysis of several major newspaper columnists’ responses to Hardaway’s comments, Kian & Anderson summated that ‘a multitude of reporters believe that openly gay athletes in [these] sports would face constant physical threats from opponents and even their teammates’. This case study acts as evidence that homosexuality is still very much portrayed as unacceptable and something to be ashamed of in the world of sport and sports journalism.

While Amaechi’s ‘coming out’ was very vocally objected by fellow teammates, due to a multitude of ethical and legal issues, the media were more subtle when expressing their disdain. Sports journalists were not going to specifically state that they believed homosexuality had no place in the sporting world (even if they believed that to be the case), however there were ways in which they framed their reporting that allowed certain negative points of view to prevail. Hess & Venzo (2013 p. 77) call this framing ‘symbolic violence’ and describe it as ‘the way in which gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer identifying people have been ignored, trivialized and subtly excluded by the media’. Also known as ‘invisibilisation’, this subtle exclusion was also apparent in Chawansky’s class activity when students chose not to mention her hypothetical female partner in their reports, but were more than happy to mention her hypothetical male partner.

While US and Australian sports journalism has the tendency to portray homosexuality negatively (as explored above), in Uganda, homosexual acts and the mention of homosexuality in any medium of journalism is entirely illegal. In April 2009 the Ugandan Government introduced an ‘Anti-homosexuality Bill’ which made any kind of homosexual activity or relationship a crime. Offenders were (and still are) faced with 14 years of jail-time (Strand 2012, p. 567). According to Strand (2012, p. 570) The Bill also outlines the offence of ‘”promotion of homosexuality”, to curb the publishing of any information related to same-sex practices, relationships and organisations working with individuals in same-sex relations’. For ‘promotion of homosexuality’ in Uganda, individuals are faced with a three-year prison sentence.

The Ugandan media publish tabloid papers that ‘out’ homosexual individuals in the community, leading to their banishment and arrest. Strand (2012, p. 577) studied one newspaper in particular called Red Pepper. He writes: ‘Red Pepper regularly outs individuals believed to be homosexual by publicising names and pictures or enough other information for the individuals to be easily identified in their community. The paper urges the public to assist their campaigns by submitting the names of suspected homosexuals.’ Headlines that appear in Red Pepper and other similar publications include: Top Homos Named, Homo Terror and Kampala’s Notorious Lesbians Unearthed. The government-owned publication New Vision often calls for action to be taken against gay and lesbian individuals and in one recent issue stated: ‘The police should spy on the perverts, arrest and prosecute them. Relevant government departments must outlaw or restrict websites, magazines, newspapers and television channels promoting immorality—including homosexuality, lesbianism, pornography, etc’ (Strand 2012, p. 570). In all mediums of Ugandan journalism, homosexuality is portrayed as a sin, a crime and something that is not tolerated or accepted at all.

Miller (2013, pp. 274-349) raises an interesting point about homosexuality, the media and defamation. She writes: ‘False imputations of homosexuality have long been considered by courts to be defamatory per se, but many jurisdictions are beginning to revisit the issues surrounding homosexuality and defamation in the wake of a national debate over gay rights.’ In Miller’s study, she examines whether or not courts should count accusations of homosexuality as defamatory. Currently in the US and Australia, courts are divided; some still count false imputations of homosexuality as defamatory while others have believe that imputations of homosexuality ‘no longer result in the type of shame and ridicule that is associated with the other categories of defamation like accusing someone of criminal conduct’ (Miller 2013, p. 330). What can be counted as defamatory has changed considerably throughout history. As an example, Miller points out that calling someone a fascist, communist or racist was once considered defamatory but today such imputations would more than likely be dismissed. Similarly throughout the 19th and early 20th century, imputations that a white person was actually black were seen as defamatory—today this is not the case and to many, such a notion would seem incredibly racist and unjust.

According to Miller (2013, p. 280) a Washington Post ABC News poll held in 2013 resulted in 81 per cent of adults aged 18 to 29 saying that they were supportive of gay marriage—a strong indication that homosexuality is becoming more accepted in Western society. At the same time, however, courts in various states still count false imputations of homosexuality as defamatory under the ‘right-minded thinking’ defence. While there is certainly a sense of change in the air, many courts still view false imputations of homosexuality as defamatory in the same way they view false imputations of criminal conduct. This, in-turn, portrays homosexuality as something that is shameful, unaccepted and undesirable.

In Italian print media, homosexuality is still often portrayed as a personality flaw or a sin that must be forgiven, according to Roy (2012, pp. 175-190). When Italian singer Tiziano Ferro announced that he was gay in 2010 two major Italian newspapers: the Corriere della Sera and La Republica used a ‘counter-criminal discourse and merciful father discourse’ to frame their reporting (Roy 2012 p. 176). The Corriere della Sera compared Ferro’s coming out to a criminal confessing his crime and begging the public for forgiveness. Roy writes: ‘The whole narrative structure of the page aims to legitimise and protect him; to decriminalise his homosexuality’. The article frames Ferro as someone who has done something wrong and is now asking the public for forgiveness. The article constantly refers to Ferro as ‘overcoming’ something, which Roy (2012, p.189) describes as ‘pathologizing’ homosexuality—as if it is a ‘disease, illness or disorder’ that Ferro has now overcome through the help of a forgiving public. In essence, the Corriere della Sera portrays Ferro as an exception to ‘other homosexuals’ who have not been granted forgiveness by the public and are inherently still flawed.

La Republica—another popular centre-left Italian newspaper—also portrays Ferro as a criminal and the public as forgivers. The article uses pull-quotes from Ferro such as ‘It was all my doing, the problem has always been me’ while using accompanying images of Ferro appearing thankful and indebted. The article concludes with mention of Ferro’s father’s love and understanding, his supportive straight friends and his lawyer and manager that accept him. There is however no reference the existence a homosexual world at all. At no point in the La Republica article does Ferro take a stand against inequity or discrimination, mention his views about civil partnerships or his friendships or relationships with other gay men and women. Roy (2012 p. 188) sums this up by stating: ‘This declaration to an audience—to a confessor—purifies, dispenses, redeems and frees the subject from their fault. But this freedom is only apparent because at the same time it delivers the subject into the hands of the audience.’ Through Italian print media—La Republica and Corriere della Sera—homosexuality is portrayed as a flaw that needs to be forgiven.

In many newspapers around the world, gay and lesbian commitment ceremonies and weddings are absent from wedding announcement pages. Jensen (1996 pp. 13-28) believes that the decision not to include gay commitment announcements in newspapers is political and involves ‘choices about how to represent the world and whose definitions to use’. In 1992 a popular American newspaper—The American Statesman—included a wedding announcement for a lesbian couple which prompted an uproar from many readers (Jensen 1996 p.20). The newspaper’s editors responded by saying they believed gay ceremonies fit-in with their news values and that they saw no reason to exclude them from their coverage. Jensen (1996 p. 24) believes that the exclusion of gay and lesbian commitment ceremonies in mainstream newspapers is a form of oppression, which he defines as ‘a system of interrelated barriers and forces which reduce, immobilize and mould people who belong to a certain group, and effect their subordination to another group’. In this sense, the invisibility of gay and lesbian ceremonies in marriage pages alludes to the viewpoint that such ceremonies are not as valid or as meaningful as their straight equivalents. In essence, it says that they are not newsworthy. Their exclusion ‘represents a value dimension in which the “natural” is the better alternative’ (Jensen 1996 p. 27).

Representation is another issue that Jensen explores. Not only are gay and lesbian people largely absent from wedding pages, they often appear in mainstream media in other, more cliché and often degrading forms. Jensen (1996, p. 23) writes: ‘Representations can be harmful both for what they include and what they exclude, and for the ways they use demeaning stereotypes and promote lesbian and gay invisibility’. Mass media often use ‘weak and silly, or evil and corrupt’ characterisations of gay and lesbian people and as Jensen very aptly states: ‘Almost never shown in the media are just plain gay folks, used in roles which do not centre on their deviance as a threat to the moral order which must be countered through ridicule of physical violence’ (1996, p. 22). Showing gay and lesbian wedding announcements in mainstream newspapers would help portray homosexuality as ‘normal’ and something that is not shameful and deviant. It would also counter stereotypes that many heterosexual individuals may hold (such as the idea that all homosexual individuals partake in cheap sex with multiple partners) and at the same time, allow homosexual individuals to view more positive representations of their own community.

It is at this point that Jensen’s argument takes an aggressive turn. He writes that ‘the visible presence of healthy, non-stereotypic lesbians and gay men does pose a serious threat: it undermines the unquestioned normalcy of the status quo and opens up the possibility of making choices to people who might never otherwise have considered or understood that such choices could be made’ (1996, p. 21). This being said, the unfortunate reality is that even today, not much has changed. Gay and lesbian couples are not featured in a large majority of mainstream newspaper wedding pages. This indicates a lack of respect for homosexual relationships and encourages negative stereotypes. In short, it portrays gay and lesbian people as lesser citizens who have less of a right to be proud of their partnerships. Including gay and lesbian couples in wedding pages would represent the gay community as broader, more dignified and more positive.

Moscowitz (2010, pp. 24-29) also explores the issue of gay marriage in the media, but takes a different approach and focuses specifically on the ways in which national network television news covered the 2003 and 2004 US gay and lesbian marriage debate. The debate was sparked by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom issuing 3,000 marriage licenses to homosexual couples, and a few months later Massachusetts legalizing same-sex marriage (Moscowitz 2010, p. 27). Moscowitz believes that reporting of the debate was dominated by heterosexual perspectives, causing gay and lesbian people (who were at the root of the debate) to be objectified and seen as ‘others’. Throughout the reporting, homosexual individuals were prevalent visually but their perspectives and stories were largely unheard. Essentially the reporting of the event was ‘normalized’ so that it addressed a heterosexual audience. She writes: ‘Today’s consumerist media representations perpetuate an image of the gay and lesbian community within a narrow range of discourses on gender, race, class and sexuality’. She goes on to state that in mainstream media the gay community is all-too-often constructed to appeal to a straight audience. In the case of the marriage debates, many network news television stations depicted gay people as white, flamboyant male ‘party-goers’—a common stereotype that many heterosexual individuals find easy to accept.

This decision to promote homosexual stereotypes rather than diversity can be explained through the theory of media framing. Moscowitz (2010, p. 24) writes: ‘to make sense of extraordinary events, and to be able to do their jobs efficiently, journalists organise stories around major societal themes, frames or conflicts that offer “definitions of social reality”’. She believes that media framing acts as ‘organising principles that are socially shared and persistent over time, that work symbolically to meaningfully structure the social world’. Gay stereotypes are often used by mainstream journalists as they represent the views of a dominant heterosexual society who make up the majority of news-viewers. To many editors, it does not matter whether or not such stereotypes are accurate. In the mainstream media’s reporting of the marriage debate, speaking roles were often given to heterosexual professionals such as lawyers, legislators, celebrants and policemen/women rather than homosexual people who wanted to get married themselves (Moscowitz 2010, p.23). News reports often focussed on (assumed) heterosexual reporters speaking to people who oppose gay marriage, rather than focussing on gay couples. This exclusion portrays gay couples as not part of mainstream society and objectifies them as something to be talked about rather than included.

In multiple mediums of journalism homosexuality is portrayed as shallow and superficial. Caron & Saucier (2008, pp. 504-523) analysed the content of a number of gay men’s magazines including Genre, Instinct and Out for ‘article and advertisement quality’. Results showed that even in gay-targeted magazines, many articles and images objectified men’s bodies, set near-impossible standards for fitness and placed an incredibly high degree of importance on appearance and material possessions. Caron & Saucier (2008, p. 515) found that the images and articles in these magazines ‘portrayed a specific body type that only few men can actually mould their bodies into’, and write that such content has the possibility of leading to ‘body image issues, eating disorders, low self-esteem and low self-efficacy’.

When studying ads specifically, Caron & Saucier (2008, p. 520) found that ‘advertising spending in gay publications increased throughout the 1990s from 61.6 million in 1995 to 73.7 million in 1996, and from $120 million in 1998 to $155.3 million in 1999’ and that throughout the 90s and 2000s, ‘gay culture placed a much higher emphasis on being attractive than ever before’. Article-wise they found that the content of many of the studied magazines placed a very high level of importance on lifestyle and looks. ‘Over one third (37 per cent) of all the articles featured entertainment and popular culture, while only one tenth (11 per cent) featured political and world issues. Articles about appearance and fashion made up 24 per cent of content’ (Caron & Saucier 2008, p. 519). Each magazine also contained a ‘featured men’ section that existed solely for the purpose of advertising ‘desirable men’, highlighting their good-looks and success. Judging by these statistics it seems as though the main goals of the studied magazines are to help gay men gain and maintain a certain social status and better their peers.

These findings are particularly worrying as they portray not only to the homosexual community, but to the heterosexual community as well, that homosexual people are all ‘young, hairless, wealthy, attractive, sexually promiscuous, Caucasian and interested in popular culture/entertainment’ (Caron & Saucier 2008, p. 523). This promotes restricting stereotypes in both the gay and straight community and could very-well lead homosexual individuals to develop a sense negative self-worth. Such unvaried content sets standards for gay men and women that are in some cases literally impossible to live up-to, placing emphasis on physical attributes and portraying the gay community as shallow, homogeneous and image-obsessed. These restricting and often false stereotypes also lend themselves to Ng’s (2013, pp. 258-283) concept of ‘gaystreaming’—the constant promotion of exclusively gay-themed shows/articles/interviews/information by a media channel. A good example of gaystreaming is FOX’s ‘Logo’ television channel which airs only gay related programs. While gaystreaming has been praised for integrating homosexual content within mainstream society, it is also criticized for ‘promoting a relatively narrow set of representations’ (Ng 2013, p. 264), and often portrays homosexual men as ‘white, privileged and fabulous’, and homosexual women as ‘butch, lazy and masculine’.

While the majority of this essay has focussed on the ways in which different mediums of journalism negatively portray homosexuality, there are a range of publications that portray homosexuality as socially acceptable, normal, natural and something to celebrate. Before the gay press was introduced, many homosexual individuals felt unaccounted for, ignored and excluded in many areas of society. They had no cultural heritage, no one to tell their stories to and no medium to connect with like-minded people. In 1966, however, The Advocate was created. According to Spiegelman (1982, pp. 308-325) The Advocate has, and continues to ‘stalwartly serve the cause of gay rights with features on the treatment of gay prisoners, on discrimination BY gay people on the grounds of racism, sexism, agism and looksism’. Unlike many of the previously discussed gay publications that promote homogeneous shallow stereotypes, The Advocate, which is still running today (and a range of other ‘serious’ homosexual publications), act as ‘corrective and perhaps, among a minority too silent out of legitimate fear and unearned guilt, agents of responsible moral and legal change’ (Spiegleman 1982 p. 313).

The existence of thought-provoking and intelligent gay print and online media that encourages diversity is incredibly important in the gay community, especially for young people who may be struggling with finding their identity. Cover (2005 p. 130) writes that positive gay media is often used by homosexual youth to ‘forge a sense of community belonging’ which for some individuals is extremely hard, if not impossible to find elsewhere. He goes on to state that ‘such publications mediate an important dynamic between self-identity and group or community identity through motifs of belonging, engagement and access’. Cover believes that such magazines play a vital role in the construction of community belonging and sexual identity for many individuals. To emphasise this point he interviewed a range of homosexual-identifying university students about their involvement with specifically gay-themed publications.

The following two responses stood out:

‘I tend to feel comfortable reading Melbourne Star Observer [a popular gay newspaper] because it’s news and stuff about the people I belong with. A lot of what they write about directly affects me, like changes in the laws, things that are going on, and dance parties and clubs opening and closing. It’s my community, and even if I’m not going out very often or seeing other gay guys around the place much, I feel like I belong to the community when I get to read MSO’ (Cover 2005, p. 114).

‘I subscribed to MSO for about six months…Sometimes I’d read everything, sometimes just some of the pages over and over again…at first I felt a bit lost, but later I could really see things of myself in there. Sometimes in the little interviews with people, sometimes even in the pictures. I wonder how many other people were doing exactly the same thing…sometimes I thought there must be thousands of people like me, too scared to go out and stuff, but lying there reading the paper’ (Cover 2005, p. 114).

The above students saw aspects of themselves reflected in the Melbourne Star Observer, and clearly felt a positive connection with its content. The paper provided them with a sense of belonging that the majority of mainstream media, with its focus on heterosexual issues and individuals, could not. For many people ‘coming out’ is a painful and lonely experience that is only made harder by negative portrayals of homosexuality and homosexual individuals in various mediums of mainstream journalism. Gay journalism that portrays homosexuality as acceptable, normal, diverse and positive can play an extremely important role in an individual’s self-acceptance and sense of self-worth.

In Australian and American sports journalism, homosexuality is often portrayed as shameful and ‘non-existent’; in all mediums of Ugandan journalism, even the mention of homosexual issues is likely to lead to a jail sentence. In many courts world-wide, being falsely accused of being a homosexual is still viewed in the same light as being accused of criminal activity, and in certain Italian radio stations as well as online and print publications, homosexuality is portrayed as a flaw that needs to be forgiven and overcome. Furthermore, in some exclusively gay magazines, homosexuality is portrayed negatively through vapid and shallow stereotypes that ignore a large portion of the gay community. On the other hand there are a number of publications that portray homosexuality and homosexual individuals in a positive light, providing gay and lesbian people with a link to a community where they will be accepted and feel comfortable. Many people who identify as homosexual find it difficult to accept themselves even without the negative portrayal and exclusion of homosexuality in the media, but while negative and exclusionary portrayals of homosexuality may still prevail, there will always be inclusive, positive and diverse publications available; the key, however, is knowing where to find them.

References:
Chawansky, M 2010 ‘An Active Learning Approach to Understanding Gender, Sexuality, and Sport Journalism’, Feminist Teacher: A Journal of the Practices, Theories, and Scholarship of Feminist Teaching, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 75-77.
Cover, R 2005 ‘Engaging Sexualities: Lesbian/Gay Print Journalism, Community Belonging, Social Space and Physical Place’, Pacific Journalism Review, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 113-132.
Grundy, B 2009, So you want to be a journalist, Cambridge University Press, Vic.
Jensen, R 1996 ‘The politics and ethics of lesbian and gay “wedding”; announcements in newspapers’, Howard Journal of Communications, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 13-28.
Kian, EM & Anderson, E 2009 ‘John Amaechi: Changing the Way Sport Reporters Examine Gay Athletes’, Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 56, no. 7, pp. 799-818.
Miller, H 2013 ‘Homosexuality as Defamation: A Proposal for the Use of the “Right-Thinking Minds” Approach in the Development of Modern Jurisprudence’, Communication Law and Policy, vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 349-374.
Moscowitz, L 2010 ‘Gay Marriage in Television News: Voice and Visual Representation in the Same-Sex Marriage Debate’, Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 24-39.
Ng, E 2013 ‘A “Post‐Gay” Era? Media Gaystreaming, Homonormativity, and the Politics of LGBT Integration’, Communication, Culture & Critique, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 258-283.
Roy, O 2012 ‘The colour of gayness: Representations of queers of colour in Québec’s gay media’, Sexualities, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 175-190.
Saucier, J & Caron, S 2008 ‘An Investigation of Content and Media Images in Gay Men’s Magazines’, Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 504-523.
Spiegelman, W 1982 ‘The Progress Of A Genre: Gay Journalism And Its Audience’, Salmagundi, vol. 03 no. 58/59, pp. 308-325.
Strand, C 2012 ‘Homophobia as a barrier to comprehensive media coverage of the Ugandan Anti-Homosexual Bill’, Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 59, no. 4, pp. 564-579.
Venzo, P & Hess, K 2013 ‘‘Honk Against Homophobia’: Rethinking Relationships Between Media and Sexual Minorities’, Journal of Homosexuality, vol.6, no.2, pp. 60-80.

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