in stories that treat rumors alleging a politician is gay or lesbian as tantamount to a defamation of character. Prejudice in reporting also has appeared in the more universal sense of unsubstantiated generalizations about gays and lesbians as a whole. This is the form of prejudice, referred to by Gordon Allport in The Nature of Prejudice as "being down on something you're not up on." Yet this is more than a simple negative overgeneralization. As Allport wrote: "A prejudice, unlike a simple misconception, is actively resistant to all evidence that would unseat it." Prejudice, in other words, is "an antipathy based upon a faulty and inflexible generalization." This is a study of the ways in which prejudice, defined in both these ways, has undermined reporting about gays and lesbians ever since coverage began. The research is based on a qualitative analysis of the 356 stories about gays and lesbians that appeared in the nation's major newsweeklies, Time and Newsweek, from 1947 to 1997. These publications were selected not because they are thought to be substantially better or worse in reporting on this issue than other publications, but because they address a general nationwide audience and have the potential to influence popular prejudices, just as they may be influenced by them. While Kinsey had opened up the discussion of sexual matters to some extent as early as 1948, the nation's two largest newsweeklies (then as now), Time and Newsweek, approached the subject slowly, at first. Between them, they published just two articles about homosexuals in the 1940's, 21 in the 1950's, and 25 in the 1960's. Nearly all these articles were resoundingly critical of homosexuals both in language and content. They also relied almost entirely on second-hand sources, such as military, law enforcement, government officials, and psychiatrists. Homosexuals themselves were rarely quoted--in ...
