Coverage of Gay Males, Lesbians In Newspaper Lifestyle Sections

Newspaper Research Journal, Summer 2004 by Gibson, Rhonda

Coverage of sexual minorities in the mainstream press has garnered recent attention. The Project for the Study of Sexual Orientation Issues in the News conducted two studies that examined the portrayal of gays and lesbians in newspapers and the perceptions of readers about this coverage.1 One finding is that news stories about homosexuality do not cover the "everyday lives" of sexual minorities. However, these studies have focused on either the entire newspaper or only the front-page section. There has been no published quantitative study of the lifestyle section of the newspaper. This study attempts to fill that void by examining the lifestyle sections of four major daily newspapers to analyze coverage of sexual minorities.

Until the 1940s, American news media basically ignored homosexuality.2 An analysis of the 356 stories about gays and lesbians that appeared in Time and Newsweek from 1947 to 19973 suggests that it was the Kinsey report on male sexuality published in 1948 that first drew reporters to the subject of homosexuality. The study confirms that articles before the 1960s were strongly critical of homosexuals. The gay rights movement of the 1970s and the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s prompted changes in how the news media covered sexual minorities, bringing significantly more coverage.4 The first few years of the 21st century have seen even more coverage of gays in newspapers. The New York Times announced in August 2002 that its Sunday Styles section would begin publishing reports of same-sex commitment ceremonies along with the traditional heterosexual wedding announcements. Hundreds of other newspapers have followed suit. The issue of same-sex marriage has received constant coverage since the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in November 2003 that same-sex couples have the same right to marry as heterosexuals.

Although overall coverage of the gay community has improved, it is still lacking. A 2000 study of 363 gay male and lesbian journalists from mainstream news organizations found dissatisfaction with coverage of the gay community.5 Respondents ranked quality of coverage of hot-button national stories far higher than local coverage of gay issues. A quote from one of the respondents in the 2000 study summed up this perception:

I believe journalists fail to cover the gay community as a community. Editors forget that the community does more than hold a parade once a year. There are not enough stories that depict gay people as ordinary people.6

Results from a 1990 ASNE survey7 of 205 gay and lesbian journalists echo this sentiment.

This study is designed to examine how newspapers actually do cover the more "ordinary" lives of gays and lesbians. Instead of focusing on the "hard news" sections of the newspaper, as was the case with all of the quantitative studies mentioned above, this study will examine only the lifestyle section of the newspaper.

A fair press must find ways to reflect all segments of society; likewise, the press cannot perpetuate derogatory stereotypes and consider itself an accurate source of news. Social science theorists examining the effects of media coverage of women and racial minorities suggest that negative and inaccurate portrayals of minority groups influence the manner in which those groups view themselves and are viewed by majority group members as well.8 Specifically, studies have shown that media portrayals of minorities influence self-esteem levels, tendency to stereotype and acceptance of violence, among other negative effects.9 Gross suggests that in an increasingly mediated world, under-representation in the mass media serves to maintain the powerless status of minority groups.10 Gross argues that because they have been mostly ignored or denied by the mass media, gays have been "symbolically annihilated" from the political and social landscape.

Research Questions

To determine what steps newspapers could take to improve coverage of sexual minorities, it is first necessary to examine their current patterns of coverage. As such, the following research questions were posed:

R1:

How much of the content of newspaper lifestyle sections deals with gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals and their specific issues?

R2:

What types of stories deal with GLBTs and their specific issues, and what language is used to refer to homosexuality?

R3:

Are these stories generated locally or do they come from other sources such as syndicates, wire services or other newspapers?

Method

Content analysis was used to answer the research questions. Ten months of stories in lifestyle sections from four major daily newspapers were analyzed. Two months were randomly selected from each of the years 1998-2002. The newspapers analyzed were the Houston Chronicle, The Baltimore Sun, The Denver Post and The Seattle Times. These four newspapers were selected for geographic diversity, and all have daily circulations of more than 200,000.

The unit of analysis was the individual news story or similar item. Included were news or feature stories, reviews, advice columns, local columns, stand-alone graphics or photos, expanded TV or movie descriptions and expanded calendar event descriptions. Content that was not coded included: teasers, ads, movie listings, TV listings/charts, entertainment calendars, puzzles, horoscopes, stand-alone comics sections, bridge columns, The Mini Page, wedding announcements, TV ratings, entertainment top-10 listings and indexes.