By Susan Price
BRISBANE — Sydney lesbian and gay rights activist Cath Phillips was guest speaker at the annual general meeting of the Gay and Lesbian Welfare Association here on September 23rd.
Much of the theoretical basis for her talk, Phillips said, came from the writings of Noam Chomsky and Edward Hermann. Referring to the establishment media "filters" which ensure that the media operate in the interests of their owners, Phillipps said the same phenomenon occurs in the lesbian and gay media because of the pressures of the dollar.
Phillips remarked, "If media serves the interests of the owners, then who are its owners? In both the mainstream and lesbian and gay community, they are people with money. Without money, you can't buy equipment and you can't pay staff ...
"So before you even begin ... you already have to have a certain amount of privilege and power in order to establish yourself in the media. Now it doesn't matter whether its the Sydney Star Observer, Queensland Pride or Burn, without profit it can't survive. It's simple. The only way to get profit is advertising. So all media is dependent upon advertising. In the case of free giveaways like Burn and Queensland Pride and a lot of alternative media, this is even more so. Advertisers do not find attractive that which does not serve their purpose."
Phillips outlined the experience of Capital Q in its early stages. A free paper, it relies on advertising to survive. Through an agreement with its publishers, Capital Q was designated as a coalition paper, i.e. it was produced for both men and women, and it featured the word "queer" on its cover.
The big advertisers in Capital Q were and are large gay venues in Sydney. There were two venues which originally refused to advertise, one on the basis of the word "queer" on the front cover and the second on the basis that lesbian content was featured in it.
Phillips sees the transition of Capital Q to its present role — which she defines as "primarily a bar-oriented magazine" — as directly related to the pressures of advertisers. She added that the word "queer" no longer appears on the front cover.
Phillips also discussed the "filter" of construction of truth. As Chomsky states, if a politician or public servant tells a journalist that X, Y or Z is true, the journalist is under no compulsion to verify the information; it is taken as true. However, if an opposing opinion is put by someone outside of the mainstream, the journalist is less likely to report this information because of the time it would take to verify it. Phillips stressed that the same can often be true of news sources within the lesbian and gay community.
Another filter Phillips outlined which affect the lesbian and gay press is "flak".
"If you produce a story which is not in the interests of the people about whom the story is written, you get into trouble, and if you write a story about a big institution you get into big trouble. The institution will demand certain things ... such as equal space ... or withdraw their advertising, so you don't tend to write those kinds of stories. If you write stories that bother little people, the kind of flak you get tends to be more manageable ...
"Flak has two results: profit is threatened by the withdrawal of advertising; the gathering of news is threatened by the withdrawal of information."
She went on to say that bias, while well intentioned, creates a level of control of the freedom of the lesbian and gay press. "The reason for gay and lesbian media is primarily to present a gay and lesbian point of view and gay and lesbian information, which means that before any gay and lesbian reporter turns their computer on, they already have assumed the position. The position is that the outcome of the story will be a good thing for gays and lesbians. If the outcome of that story may be a bad thing for gays and lesbians, they won't write the story."
Phillips cited major issues which she believes have never been explored to their fullest in the gay and lesbian media. One is the nature and extent of the AIDS business in Australia. Phillips sees the pressures for funding many organisations face, and the fact that representatives of funding bodies and community AIDS organisations also sit on the boards of newspapers within the gay and lesbian community, as a reason that some of these stories may never be written.
The Gay and Lesbian Welfare Association is a self-funding organisation that provides both phone and face-to-face counselling for people coming to terms with their sexuality. It also provides community education work with tertiary students and other members of the community, as well as conducting prison visits to gay and lesbian inmates and training courses for their volunteer counsellors. Gai Lemon was re-elected president of the GLWA.