The Perpetuation of Prejudice in Reporting on Gays and Lesbians: Time and Newsweek: The First Fifty Years

Abstract

This study reveals that the trend in reporting on gays and lesbians during the past fifty years has been going in the right direction, as the presence of prejudicial—or unsupported and unbalanced—allegations have steadily declined. Yet, more disturbingly, it also finds that prejudicial allegations have continued to appear well into the 1990s—distorting coverage of gays and lesbians in the military, anti-discrimination measures and the more recent issue of gay and lesbian marriage. Among the most significant and consistent findings in this regard have been the implicit assumptions that homosexuality is inherently negative; that gays are sexually predatory; and that gays and lesbians are a threat to children—or, more specifically, that they “recruit,” “seduce” and “molest” children. These assumptions and allegations repeatedly have appeared, without the evidence to support them, and frequently without balance from the gays and lesbians who are subject to them. Moreover, they have continued to appear in spite of the occasional acknowledgment that the evidence on the specific charges that gays and lesbians are sexual predators and child molesters would, in fact, “unseat” them.