CBS News producer Rose Arce told a mostly female audience in 1 Rockefeller Center yesterday that while homosexuals have made great strides on and off the camera in the television news industry, there could still be improvements made in both those areas.
Arce, who has won both a Pulitzer prize and an Emmy Award, said two issues are at the center of the topic of homosexuals in the newsroom -- how comfortable gays and lesbians are covering stories and on the air and how comfortable they are in the workplace environment.
She said gays and lesbians battle several problems or stereotypes even today, when there are more gays and lesbians entering the industry and when one of the industry's largest corporations, CBS, has hired the first openly gay on-air correspondent.
Openly gay correspondents will often be discouraged from doing pieces dealing with homosexual issues so they are not seen by the viewers as "too gay," Arce said.
The rise of reporting using hidden cameras has also led to perpetuation of stereotypes or biased reporting of gay issues, especially sex and health issues.
"In an attempt to catch people having unsafe sex there's been a criminalization of gay behavior," Arce said.
In addition, stereotypes about homosexuals can enter into story assignments. Television jobs, especially those of producers, are often harried and make it difficult to have a family.
Stereotypes that lesbians are tougher and without families help get them certain story assignments and positions. "There's a sense that 'lesbians can do that,'" Arce said.
However, the stereotypes can also hurt since there is a hesitancy to assign stories about children, makeup and fashion to lesbians, she said.
Lesbians are also virtually invisible as on-air correspondents, possibly because the industry focuses closely on the physical appearance of females.
Females have to look not only feminine and heterosexual, Arce said, but "hyper-heterosexual."
Arce said there are huge differences between large and small markets in how openly gay, or "out," employees are treated and how stories about gays are covered.
"People can still be fired for being gay [and] can still be fired for coming out," Arce said. "People can still be fired for telling gay stories."
She said she hopes her work shows networks can cover gay issues responsibly, without being sensationalistic or offensive.
Correspondents and producers have to be willing to include alternate voices and perspectives in stories and to include the larger social context into which gay issues fall. Also, television news programs need to treat some issues with respect for privacy, she said.
Arce characterized the current state of homosexuals in the industry as tenuous. While gays and lesbians have made strides in recent years, they are not moving up the ladder as fast as would be ideal. Some fear they are a minority that has hit its glass ceiling, she said.
Arce said the challenges facing homosexual journalists today are several, including pushing for more gays and lesbians quoted in stories, covering issues important for gays and lesbians and addressing issues not just from a heterosexual viewpoint.
Arce is the Convention Programming Chair for the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and is also the Deputy Northeast Regional director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
The Carpenter Foundation, the Dartmouth Rainbow Alliance, the Coalition of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Concerns, the GLBT Programming Office and Women's Studies all sponsored her visit to campus.
