JOURNALISM PANEL PUTS LGBT HEALTH COVERAGE INTO CONTEXT

Christiana Lilly

It’s one thing to report on health issues that impact the LGBT community — it’s another thing entirely to help readers understand the context of these issues.

Noted journalists from around the country discussed these issues during a Feb. 10 panel hosted by the South Florida chapter of NLGJA, or the Association of LGBTQ Journalists, at ArtServe’s Our Fund Hall.

While representation in the newsroom is important, said Mike Majchrowicz, the outgoing president of NLGJA South Florida, “it’s also only one side of the coin. Context matters.”

Panelists in “Crucial Context: Unpacking Media Coverage of LGBTQ Public Health Issues” were Daniel Chang, a correspondent for Kaiser Health News; Ashley Dye, the audience director for The Marshall Project; Fenit Nirappil, public health reporter for the Washington Post; Benjamin Ryan, an independent journalist; and Nic Zantop, the deputy director of Transinclusive Group. Local journalist Kareem Awadalla moderated the panel.

The conversation kicked off with coverage of MPox, formerly known as monkeypox. Although it was largely impacting men who have sex with men, many of the reporters said health organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as their own newsrooms were hesitant to call that out. Chang, for example, said he received pushback on reporting that a majority of people with MPox were men who had sex with men.

However, the reporters on the panel felt it was important to let this population know it was something they needed to be vigilant about.

“No one wanted to say it was a ‘gay disease,’” said Ryan, who reported on MPox for outlets such as NBC News and The Guardian. “Gay people were desperate for information.”

Nirappil added that by not being forthcoming with readers about the populations being most affected by MPox, it was a “backlash to all the equality gains we’ve made.”

“What I care about is educating people at risk,” he said about his health coverage.

As a community advocate with Traninclusive, Zantop has been vigilantly following anti-LGBT and specifically anti-trans legislation making its way through Florida. As they also keep track of media coverage of the Florida Board of Medicine’s rulings on healthcare for trans people, they noticed some outlets were playing both sides and “just asking questions” and even at times giving a platform to transphobia.

“Trans healthcare is under attack in Florida and around the world,” they said.

There was also discussion about being queer in the newsroom. Nirappil noted that simply having LGBT representation in the newsroom is not enough — as a gay man, he said that does not give him “special insight into the trans experience,” for example.

Dye recounted how before working with The Marshall Project, they had to almost singlehandedly educate their entire newsroom about using the right pronouns, doing away with deadnames, and other language issues surrounding the LGBT community. However, they said it should just be seen as a “matter of fact checking” and not relying on a queer person to constantly check errors.

“It’s just part of respect,” Dye added.

The free event, which was funded through a grant from PEN America, was also supported by SPJ Florida, Our Fund Foundation and South Florida Gay News.