Straight News: Gays, Lesbians and the News Media (Between Men - Between Women: Lesbian & Gay Studies) - Tapa dura

"Alwood examines how the relationship between gay men, lesbians and the American news media has evolved since World War II. Mr. Alwood's useful history follows a trail of derision and dismissal... Straight News is an important book." -- New York Times Book Review

Addressing the critical role of the media in creating a public image of gay issues and lives, this is a comprehensive survey of how the news media have covered, or failed to cover, major lesbian and gay issues since the 1940s. A former CNN reporter, the author provides an insider's view of the changing fortunes of lesbians and gays in American print and broadcasting media. The book traces the stories on gay and lesbian issues which have been featured in the American press, and the changing attitudes towards those issues which they represent. Through close examination of the stories to which the media failed to devote attention, such as the Stonewall rebellion of 1969 and the mass murder at New York's Ramrod bar in 1980, the book sheds light on processes by which news items are generated, assigned and edited, and how these processes have more often than not translated into the exclusion of gay and lesbian voices and concerns.