Newsroom Homophobia

By ELLIS COSE

Some editors were outraged when the American Society of Newspaper Editors asked members to post information about a survey of gay and lesbian journalists. "Will the next item on the bulletin board be for 'prostitute journalists' or 'cocaine journalists'?" mocked one. Last week, as several hundred ASNAE members arrived in Washington for their four-day annual meeting, the organization released the results of its survey. While most of the more than 200 respondents felt their employers were tolerant of gays, they reported widespread homophobia in the newsroom. They also judged their newspapers' coverage of gay-related issues to be mediocre and found management uninterested in hearing their ideas about improving it.

Such indifference does not necessarily imply conscious hostility to homosexuals. Some editors, for example, simply assume that gay and lesbian journalists are too scarce to be important. "In this newsroom there're so few of them, they're not a factor," said Norman Bell, managing editor of the Tacoma Morning News Tribune. Others decline to acknowledge gay staffers or solicit their views for fear of seeming discriminatory or of violating their privacy.

Yet many editors do not shrink from covering issues that involve racial minorities or seeking input on those questions from their black, Hispanic or Asian staffers. One difference between the roles of racial minorities and homosexuals in the news business, of course, is that the ethnic groups are highly visible, while many gays remain closeted. Another difference concerns editorial attitudes: though most news organizations have accepted the importance of racial coverage, issues of concern to gays still engender widespread discomfort.

After the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek, Calif., gave front-page display to San Francisco's 1989 gay freedom-day parade, copy editor Bill Walter declared in a memo, "Bad things, disgusting things, inhuman things happen . . . But we don't have to describe every naked person, or show a photo of every dead body." The message was clear: "disgusting" things are better left off the front page. That is a dangerous mind-set for a journalist. Yet that spirit has permeated coverage of gay issues in general -- and of AIDS in particular.

James Kinsella, author of Covering the Plague: AIDS & the American Media (Rutgers University Press; $22.95) aptly catalogs journalism's sins in this area. He faults newspapers for serving up vague gibberish about the exchange of "bodily fluids" instead of explaining AIDS transmission in easily understood terms. He criticizes the gay press for tiptoeing around the story initially and -- in at least one case -- for focusing on a featherbrained medical-conspiracy angle. He condemns the TV networks for using fuzzy, ambiguous language. He raps the minority press for largely ignoring the story, and the newsmagazines for coming to it late.

Eventually AIDS affected so many people, including journalists, that the story became unavoidable. Even then, a certain amount of distortion has remained: much recent coverage gives the impression that the disease is rampant among children (who actually make up only 2% of those afflicted), that it has become a "minority" disease (white gay males remain the largest single affected group), or that it is "on the wane" (a highly dubious proposition).

Interestingly, ASNE's respondents thought their papers were now doing a good job on AIDS coverage. Says Leroy Aarons, an acknowledged gay who is senior vice president for news of the Oakland Tribune and director of ASNE's survey: "AIDS served to lift the curtain on a previously taboo area of our society." It also underlines the problem of intelligently covering other taboos or invisible subjects -- ranging from domestic violence to inner-city addiction -- particularly when they are veiled because journalists and readers would rather not see them.