AUGUST 6, 1993

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

March played as civil rights event

Continued from Page 1

C-SPAN covered the entire six-hour afternoon rally live from the Mall, and Pacifica Radio provided live audio feed for radio stations around the country throughout the afternoon.

Adam's comments were echoed by other gay activists.

"The visibility of this March was important," said Gregory King, spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF), a national gay political organization. “We had a national coming out day on the front lawn of the Capitol."

The praise contrasted sharply with the criticism leveled by activists in the weeks following the 1987 March on Washington. At the time, there were bitter complaints that many media outlets had ignored the demonstration or played it down. One Pittsburgh gay group even tried in 1987 to instigate a boycott of Time and Newsweek.

"In '87," said Robin Kane, spokesperson for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, "there still wasn't a sense of the media taking us seriously as a movement." This time, Kane said, she was especially pleased with the media's "focus on the March as a civil rights march, which is certainly different than in the past."

Beyond the big cities

Kane said she was "happily surprised" that this year's March coverage extended far beyond major-city newspapers to smaller papers like the Saratoga Springs (N.Y.) Saratogian or the Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise. Many smaller newspapers relied, as they often do, on wire service copy, especially from the Associated Press, which ran several stories on the March.

"For the first time," said Kane, "so many small newspapers did have to focus on gay civil rights. We've really come out in small towns through the papers and local media in a way that's very different."

A major difference this year compared to 1987 is that many newspapers published articles on the days leading up to the March and in the days immediately following.

Joseph Bernt and Marilyn Greenwald, both professors of journalism at Ohio University, are studying March-related reporting and commentary in 30 newspapers during the 15-day period from April 18 to May 2. Bernt said that while they haven't analyzed all the papers, it's clear that "there wasn't just a flurry of coverage" the day before or day after the March.

"It extended over a really long period of time," said Bernt, "including the week after the March. It didn't just stop immediately. It stayed in the consciousness of news managers. The impression I have of '87 is that it was bare-minimum coverage. This [march] generated much more sophisticated stories; it got into the local gay and lesbian communities.

Bernt said the Atlanta Constitution and Detroit Free-Press published stories "triggered by the March on 11 of the 15 days under study. The Los Angeles Times had stories on nine of those 15 days, and the Dayton Daily News on seven. The Louisville Courier-Journal had stories on only three days, the least of any of the 30 papers being analyzed.

The Mormon-owned Salt Lake City Tribune had March-related stories on seven of the 15 days, Bernt said. The day after the March, the Tribune headlined its page one lead story, "Finding Strength in Numbers, Gays Step Up Fight for Rights." Accompanying the story were two photos, and inside the paper was another story on a gay civil rights dispute in Logan, Utah.

Many newspapers ran local-angle stories relating to the March. In a combination similar to that used by many papers, the Plain Dealer published a front-page piece on the March from its Washington bureau ("A party with a purpose"), combined with another front-page story by a staff member who interviewed Ohio marchers.

HRCF's King cited the Detroit Free Press as an example of a paper that in its Marchrelated coverage "integrated gays into every area of the paper" with stories on suburban

gays; on gay characters in stage, film, and TV; on gays in sports and on gay seniors.

Other activists praised the Washington Post for what NGLTF's Kane called an "incredible" amount of March-related coverage, including a page one story April 19 on the results of a focus group of gay people brought together by the Post.

Bill Dobbs, a New York activist, is examining March coverage in 111 English-language newspapers in the 50 states. Eventually Dobbs hopes to put together a collection that can be exhibited in gay community centers or other spaces in various cities. Dobbs said his initial impression was that there was a widespread coverage but that the quality of articles varied tremendously.

Dobbs said that although many papers did try to find a local angle to the March, he would have liked to see more stories focusing on the political struggles of local gays.

"It's nice to depict people going to D.C.," said Dobbs, "but what about the concrete tiein to local political activity. The local tie-ins were usually color, not substance."

Cropping out the fringe?

Although activists have long urged the media to show the gay community's diversity in its reporting, rather than emphasizing the more flamboyant individuals and groups, Dobbs argued that the media went too far in the other direction on the March.

"It's part of accuracy to say that most people [at the March] look like typical Americans," said Dobbs, "but it bothered me to see that the papers seemed to be... [cropping] out the cutting edge-the queers."

But that argument, which was made by media critic James Ledbetter in the Village Voice, was rejected by Leroy Aarons, president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA).

"I watched a good portion of the parade," said Aarons, a former Washington Post reporter and Oakland Tribune editor. “I obviously didn't see all of it, but there was very little of that blatant flamboyancy [in the March]. A gay pride parade has a lot more of that... but this was very sober, very serious-minded. You'd have to really seek out the flamboyant moments, and I think if the media focused on it to the exclusion of what was the general norm of the March it would have been a mistake."

The wide differences between coverage of the March this year and in 1987 should not come as a surprise. In the last six years, gay activism at the national and grass-roots level has mushroomed, forcing virtually every media outlet to take notice.

In some areas, local media watchdog groups, such as chapters of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the Philadelphia Lesbian and Gay Task Force, have negotiated with and pressured media outlets to increase their coverage. In other places, gay political organizations lobbied for better coverage.

In Dallas, for example, Tom Neal, cochair of the GLAAD chapter, says the organization has been pressing successfully for improved coverage at the Dallas Morning News. Neal expressed satisfaction with the paper's March story, written by an openly gay reporter sent to Washington for the event. But he said he was a "little disappointed" that the paper chose to feature Dykes on Bikes in the only front-page photo.

"If you're only going to run one picture,” Neal said, "Dykes on Bikes is not the picture of the March... It just kind of felt too close to stereotypes and certainly did not catch the sheer number of the March."

Media consciousness has been raised by the growth of the NLGJA, which now has more than 700 mostly mainstream media members. The NLGJA has made editors aware of their gay staffers and led them to seek input from these staffers on coverage.

Timing was a boost

And in the last year and a half, gay issues have zoomed to prominence in national politics. First there was the spotlight on gay involvement in the presidential race, followed by the continuing controversy over Continued on Page 14

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