Media Treatment: Media and Cathy Renna

media treatment: Fifty years later, media treatment of the LGBTQ community has changed and is still changing, according to CTV. The progress has been extraordinary, with the caveat that we still have a lot to do, said Cathy Renna, a former executive for the media watchdog GLAAD, who runs her own media consulting firm. Some of the coverage of rioting outside the gay bar -- unimaginable today in mainstream publications for its mocking tone -- was itself a source of the fury that led Stonewall to become a synonym for the fight for gay rights. Before Stonewall, mainstream media coverage of gays was generally nonexistent or consisted of negative, police blotter items. A 1966 Time magazine article called homosexuality a pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life. When a small group demonstrated against government treatment outside the White House in 1965, a newspaper headline said, Protesters Call Government Unfair to Deviants, noted Josh Howard, whose film The Lavender Scare, about an Eisenhower-era campaign against gays and lesbians in government, aired on PBS this week. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.