When Gay Journalists Were Closeted: A History of AIDS Coverage at 'The Tim' | Columbia News

Contents:

• WHEN GAY JOURNALISTS WERE CLOSETED: A HISTORY OF AIDS COVERAGE AT 'THE TIM'
• WHO'S GAY ON TV? DADS, JOURNALISTS, INVTIGATORS AND FOOTMEN
• GAY USA
• THE JOURNALIST WHO CHANGED HOW WE SEE GAY AMERI
• ON AMERI’S FIRST OPENLY GAY REPORTER AT A MAJOR NEWSPAPER
• GAY USA
• GAY JOURNALISTS LEADG A REVOLUTN

WHEN GAY JOURNALISTS WERE CLOSETED: A HISTORY OF AIDS COVERAGE AT 'THE TIM'

Frank BniColumnist, The New York Tim@FrankBniFormerly the chief rtrant cric for The New York Tim, Bni ma history 2011 by beg the Grey Lady's first out gay lumnist.

The Emerson College assistant profsor is also a producer of the upg film Michael, based on his Tim Magaze piece about his "ex-gay" iend. Kate FaganWrer, ESPN@KateFagan3ESPN ntributor and lumnist Kate Fagan wr about basketball (and genr and sexism and homophobia) om a place of knowledge and ep, personal appreciatn.

Amerin Charl Perez of ABC News is one to particularly note - he published his book 'Confsns of a Gay News Anchorman' (2011) after his oral of beg fired om a posn Florida when he was intified as beg gay.

WHO'S GAY ON TV? DADS, JOURNALISTS, INVTIGATORS AND FOOTMEN

@rgayA ntributg edor at Blutem Prs and the founr of Ty Hardre Prs, Gay is a renowned profsor and mentator and New York Tim ntributor wh several fictn and nonfictn books to her name. @Locs_n_LghsGranrson is equally astute at polics and sports, and he's perhaps the most proment openly gay sports journalist the U.

Now an enthiastic proponent of gay marriage, The Tim was then a place where gay reporters feared beg exiled to obscure beats and watchg their reers wher. Produced as an oral history of dozens of Schmalz’s lleagu and iends, the book and an acpanyg rad documentary foc on how journalism rpond to the AIDS crisis the 1980s and early ’90s, when many gay and lbian journalists felt tremendo profsnal prsure to rema closeted, and discrimatn agast them was wispread. “Jeff’s reportg played a real role startg to turn opn, certaly wh The Tim, but also wh the broar public, om fear, spicn, fger-potg and blamg gays, to empathy and acceptance, ” said Freedman.

“Abe Rosenthal hired me and promoted me, and I owe him a lot, but dog this rearch I beme very aware of his antipathy toward gay staffers at The Tim, ” said Freedman. Meanwhile, gay TV pneer Ellen DeGener is a face of the multibilln-dollar smetic pany Cover Girl, and televisn overflows wh gay and lbian characters, om the pudgy bro Max on the ABC show Happy Endgs to the csadg lbian journalist on the ble h Amerin Horror Story. Today, there's no ntroversy at all when Glee, arguably the gayt show on work televisn, mols what 's like to be a gay kid or how to parent one.

GAY USA

If anythg, Murphy says, Glee has had to al wh a kd of oppose ntroversy — fans plag vociferoly about gay characters not beg affectnate enough wh each other. Sudnly, TV screens swelled wh gay, lbian, bisexual and transgenr characters on realy shows, om Survivor to The Voice to RuPl's Drag Race. Gay USA is a weekly news program rerd the Manhattan Neighborhood Network Studs, that als wh gay, lbian and LGBT issu and is hosted by longtime gay rights activists and journalists Andy Humm and Ann Northrop.

Northrop worked wh WCBS and ABC Sports, was a wrer and producer for "Good Morng Ameri" and "CBS Morng News" and worked as an AIDS tor before jog Gay USA 1996. From 1991-1995, Humm hosted WNET-TVs Informed Sourc, a weekly prime-time public affairs roundtable; he has been the host or -host of Gay USA (or s precsor on the Gay Cable Network, Pri and Progrs) sce 1985.

THE JOURNALIST WHO CHANGED HOW WE SEE GAY AMERI

The first openly gay reporter to ver gay issu for a mastream outlet, he thored the first bgraphy of a gay Amerin polician and a mammoth, five book on the AIDS epimic. A stubborn mment to tth tellg—his reputatn wh the gay muny and even his physil welfare be damned—is the character tra that sh through strongt The Journalist of Castro Street, a new bgraphy by Andrew E. An assistant profsor of munitn studi at California State Universy, Sacramento, Stoner Shilts’s diari and personal papers, as well as terviews wh some of the late wrer’s iends, lleagu, lovers, and crics, to tell the story of a sgular figure whose life, om liberatn to tragic da, many ways paralleled that of the post-Stonewall gay experience.

Like his future bgraphil subject Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francis cy supervisor who would be assassated 1978, the young Shilts was a libertarian-nservative admirer of Barry Goldwater. ) After studyg journalism at the Universy of Oregon, where he me out of the closet and wrote for the stunt newspaper, Shilts got a job as a towel boy at a San Francis gay bathhoe, a b of happenstance that would take on eper signifince given the role those tablishments would play the g AIDS epimic.

ON AMERI’S FIRST OPENLY GAY REPORTER AT A MAJOR NEWSPAPER

Before gettg hired by the San Francis Chronicle (jt a few weeks after the Centers for Disease Control released a barely noticed em tailg the spread of a rare ncer afflictg homosexual men), Shilts was fired om a eelance lol televisn reportg gig after a magaze named him one of the cy’s ten most eligible gay bachelors, so disfed was the statn’s management by the prospect of an openly homosexual ntributor. Years later, after Shilts had tablished himself at the Chronicle as a rpected voice on the nascent natnal gay beat that he had done so much to tablish, more than a dozen publishers rejected his proposal for And the Band Played On.

“[Y]ou n’t hurt as many people as get hurt unr the stat quo, you n’t dispt that many people’s liv whout endg up g a kd of reactn that breeds news stori, ” Shilts told Steve Kroft of 60 Mut shortly before his ath, scribg the many ways which homophobic discrimatn, both official and ctomary, was spirg ristance.

GAY USA

Shilts also regnized that the still-secretive nature of homosexualy gave him an opportuny to rve a niche explag this myster world to mastream Ameri. Shilts beme, Stoner wr, an expert “once-hidn subjects, ” like the gay sexual mimon through which a adly vis spread, and, later, the centuri-long saga of gay men and women the U.

GAY JOURNALISTS LEADG A REVOLUTN

Ccially, Shilts saw himself not as a reprentative of the gay muny, but as a reporter who happened to be gay—an approach that set him apart om most other gay journalists workg at the time. Shilts refed to let his sexual orientatn get the way of reportg a good story, as when he veloped a rdial relatnship wh John Briggs, the California state senator whose 1978 Proposn 6 would have banned gay people om teachg public schools.

This personal , along wh his belief that “beg gay is no more of a fg characteristic for you as a human beg than beg left-hand, ” trated many the gay muny. Some gay activists nmned Shilts as a self-hatg homosexual who aimed to curry favor wh straight society by brandg his fellow gay men as promiscuo lepers; the head of San Francis’s gay Democratic Club lled Shilts “the most homophobic person the Bay Area. “Gay activists may be able to bullsh some reporter om the Los Angel Tim by tellg him that the baths don’t play any role the AIDS epimic, but they n’t bullsh me, bee I know what go on the bathho, ” he said 1984.

Shilts forthrightly addrsed gay promiscuy And the Band Played On, intifyg —alongsi Reagan admistratn difference and media apathy—as one of several factors that “allowed [AIDS] to happen. ” Shilts also emerged as a ut cric of “outg” gay public figur, cryg those who mand iologil nformy on the part of gay public figur as “lavenr fascists.