Wire Editor's Dilemma
[posted by Callimachus]
So it's a slow news night, after the few top stories, and I have a big hole to fill on page A3 (whoops; there goes out ratings, down a notch).
And there's a nice big story on the Gay Pride parades around the country, full of flamboyant pictures, or pictures of children, and flamboyant descriptions and flamboyant quotes. It's a veritable flambe of flamboyant.
Do I run that? Knowing that a lot of gays and lesbians really don't identify with this sort of event and it makes them cringe? That these may well be the only images of gays and lesbians -- identified as such -- that get into this paper for months on end? That this presents gays and lesbians not as people with sexualities, but walking sexualities and sexual agendas? That they are exactly the kind of stereotype-confirming images that do no good to the cause of letting people see past their least-pleasant ideas of someone else?
And do you want your local wire editor to even be thinking in these terms?
So it's a slow news night, after the few top stories, and I have a big hole to fill on page A3 (whoops; there goes out ratings, down a notch).
And there's a nice big story on the Gay Pride parades around the country, full of flamboyant pictures, or pictures of children, and flamboyant descriptions and flamboyant quotes. It's a veritable flambe of flamboyant.
Do I run that? Knowing that a lot of gays and lesbians really don't identify with this sort of event and it makes them cringe? That these may well be the only images of gays and lesbians -- identified as such -- that get into this paper for months on end? That this presents gays and lesbians not as people with sexualities, but walking sexualities and sexual agendas? That they are exactly the kind of stereotype-confirming images that do no good to the cause of letting people see past their least-pleasant ideas of someone else?
And do you want your local wire editor to even be thinking in these terms?
