Heterosexual Anxiety and Gay Media Visibility, Essay Example

Gay people are normally anxious about their sexuality. This is mainly a result of the stigmatization caused by the society in which they live. Gay relationships are not yet fully acceptable in the society since they are seen as a deviation form the norm. The media has also played a critical role in the propagation of such anxiety through biased coverage of issues related to gay relationships.

In media, gay men and lesbians have always been portrayed as people with deviant behavior and pathological human characteristics equitable to murderers, people with mental problems or sociopaths.  The media has had a double impact on the gay community depicting the gay as silly, weak and evil or corrupt. Second, the media has continued to treat the member of this community as if they don’t exist i.e. ignoring them or practicing what I would refer to as “media black out.”  The Oscar nominated movie Brokeback Mountain in 2005 was an indicator of the increase in mass media representation of gay and lesbians over the past decade[1]. However, lesbian and gay representation is still not very popular with mass media due to the biases livid to the members of this community (Philips, 358).

Mass media bias however is well known among the conservatives. Unfortunately most people do not understand fully the degree of homosexual-inspired biases in media reporting.  The biases have been a source of various reactions from different people. For instance homosexual activists have claimed that religion is the major source of this bias and that religion was a great obstacle to the homosexual agenda.

Other than religion, such bias by the media is a result of various factors which interact to provide incentive to the journalists and new presenters to be biased[2]. Such factors include deliberate propaganda perpetuated with the aim of generating some form of gain to the media house, institutional bias where by the media personality seek to promote their views . Also the media may choose to be biased for sensational purposes in order to sell their publications or omission which is the exact opposite of sensation. In omission the media houses overlook boring stories without considering their importance. Also the media may be biased for confirmatory purposes in order to support or affirm their belief even when it is clear that such beliefs are baseless.  Another factor that encourages the media to be biased against he gay community is the biases that exist within their audiences. In most cases readers or viewers tend to read or view what is inline with their views (Butts). The media personalities clearly understand this and would not risk loosing their viewers by presenting something contrary to what their audience expects. Last is the political influence under which the media operates. Certainly politics have great influence on what the media tell the audience.  No media house would risk losing political support or relevance by airing view different from what the political system expects.

Certainly, gay and lesbian relationships are part of our society and therefore it is imperative that we confront issue with sober minds other that promoting view that are not correct in order to remain relevant to a certain clique of people. Such acts server to change nothing apart from stigmatization of the victimized. Certainly the gay people are not abnormal as the media would like people to believe their adoption of such anomalous characteristics or preference is deeply rooted in psychological and social factors that should be considered before condemning the victims. Policy can also provide a reasonable solution to this problem by prohibiting hate speech against the members of the gay and lesbian community[3].

Works Cited

Philips Peter. Censored 2007: Top 25 censored stories. New York: Seven Stories. 2006 p 358-359

Butts Charlie. (2009). Media’s Liberal Bias (General). 18 Nov, 2009. 6 Dec, 2009. <http://americansfortruth.com/issues/medias-liberal-bias-general>

[1] Philips Peter. Censored 2007: Top 25 censored stories. New York: Seven Stories. 2006 p 358-359

[2] Butts Charlie. Media’s Liberal Bias (General). 18 Nov, 2009. 6 Dec, 2009. <http://americansfortruth.com/issues/medias-liberal-bias-general>

[3] Butts Charlie. Media’s Liberal Bias (General). 18 Nov, 2009. 6 Dec, 2009. <http://americansfortruth.com/issues/medias-liberal-bias-general>