Jun 18, 2004  |  By: LAURA DOUGLAS-BROWN  | COMMENTS     

Before the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association’s annual convention next week in New York City, board members will reach out to their peers in the press by meeting with local media outlets to encourage “fair and accurate” coverage of gay issues.

But if biased coverage is later published, don’t expect calls for public protests like the campaigns mounted by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation against Dr. Laura and other targets.

“We are not activists,” said Eric Hegedus, incoming president of NLGJA and a graphics designer at the Philadelphia Inquirer. “Our whole point is working journalist-to-journalist in the newsroom.”

The New York meetings, part of NLGJA’s new Newsroom Outreach Project, “have given us a means to do what our mission has always been,” said Pamela Strother, executive director of the gay journalist group. “Getting to know reporters one-on-one is making a huge difference.”

Last year, NLGJA began holding its board meetings in small- and medium-sized cities. While in town, board members arranged meetings with local media outlets to discuss ways to better cover gay issues, Strother said.

The success of those meetings led to the formal launch of the Newsroom Outreach Project earlier this year. Meetings have been held with 15 news organizations so far, and the group hopes to conduct 50 such meetings next year, Strother said.

“We have finally hit on what makes sense for newsrooms in how to address these issues,” she said.

The project will also benefit from a recently completed fund-raising drive. NLGJA raised $75,000 in donations and received an equal amount in matching funds from the Challenge Fund for Journalism, backed by the Ford Foundation and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

In the past, NLGJA has been best known for its members’ work in advocating for gay-inclusive policies within news organizations, including workplace policies like non-discrimination and domestic partner benefits.

But “coverage has always been the first line of our mission statement,” Strother said, adding “it’s true that our success with employment issues certainly put us on the map, … and our members had to be comfortable to be able to speak up.”

Mission overlap with GLAAD
Promoting “fair, accurate and inclusive representation of people and events in the media” is also the mission of GLAAD, a media watchdog group with offices in New York and Los Angeles.

GLAAD and NLGJA both monitor media coverage, contact news outlets and distribute guides on how to fairly cover gay issues.

The two organizations don’t work together, but they do support each other’s missions, according to leaders for each.

“GLAAD works really great from the outside, and [NLGJA works] really great from the inside,” Strother said.

Glennda Testone, GLAAD media director, echoed Strother’s comments.

“We need them pushing from the inside, and we need GLAAD to work on the outside,” she said.

But journalists may be more likely to respond to NLGJA’s efforts than to GLAAD, according to Kelly McBride, an ethicist at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a non-profit agency that provides training for professional journalists.

“We always listen to our own better,” McBride said. “When we have another organization coming in, that’s not necessarily rooted in journalism, we always see that as a special interest group. We think their message is somehow tainted, and we don’t listen as closely as we should.”

NLGJA and GLAAD also take different approaches when addressing concerns about news organizations. When GLAAD receives a complaint about defamatory coverage, the organization first attempts to discuss the issue with the news outlet in question, Testone said.

But if GLAAD receives a high volume of complaints and the situation isn’t resolved, the group will issue alerts calling on the public to contact the media outlet directly.

NLGJA has operated its own “Rapid Response Task Force” for about two years, but the organization would never issue public calls for protests against a news outlet, according to Hegedus, also coordinator for the task force.