“There is an inherent value in having us in the newsroom. Not just because we’ll be able to tell queer stories. But because we can bring our unique lived experiences to the table.”

Pride Month 2023 is well under way, a month of celebration and commemoration for the LGBTQ+ community steeped in a of history protest that can be dating back more than 50 years, including the Stonewall riots.

The Stonewall riots were a series of liberation protests that began after the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York City. A year later, the first pride events were held across the USA.

Pride Month itself began in 1999 when then President Bill Clinton introduced ‘Gay and Lesbian Month’. Ten years later, Barack Obama changed this to LGBT, while Joe Biden has updated it further to LGBTQ Pride Month.

Today, Pride is celebrated around the world with mass marches and events taking place in most major cities.

Sadly, discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community remains. At Impress, we are proud to have an extremely low tolerance for discrimination, but that alone is not a fix-all for the insensitivity and inaccuracies we continue to see in the media on a regular basis.

So where are publishers currently going wrong? What can be done to improve their coverage? And what steps can they take to move in the right direction?

We spoke to Jamie Wareham, founder and editor of QueerAF, to help tackle these important questions.

There has been great waves made on LGBTQIA+ representation across the media. But the current environment in news reporting on our community is hostile, lacking in accuracy and far from sensitive.

Amid the so-called “culture wars” and heated online debate, the fragility of our community’s lives are being forgotten, or worse, wilfully trampled on. Basic fact-checking has been lost; instead, opinion-led and biased reporting overshadows reporting on trans lives.

My worry is not only how this is affecting real people’s lives – including emboldening the government to consider making a form of discrimination against trans people legal – but what it does for journalism itself. In an age where AI is likely to be this generation’s printing press moment, we need to ensure trust in journalism is enshrined. My worry is, with attacks by columnists and editorial agendas on marginalised communities, like trans and queer people, we’re setting up our industry to fail.

There is a way to balance the rights of women and trans women. To balance straight folk and queer folk. Just as there are with all marginalised communities and the majority. Reporters need to interrogate the calls from campaigners, just like they do with politicians – and ask the difficult questions. Explain when rhetoric is rhetoric and what is fact.

A lot of the heat misses that trans people simply want equity and fairness. They aren’t looking to take away women’s rights. When reporters hear that trans people are spreading propaganda or looking to infringe on the rights of others, they should interrogate this. Is this actually what trans people and organisations are saying? I’m yet to see this myself.

Equally, we’re regulated by Impress specifically because its Standards Code prevents this kind of discriminatory reporting that pits one group against another – one of the worst instincts of the media. A lot of organisations could learn how to turn the heat down. As a publisher that has, it’s making a huge difference to our bottom line. People are fed up of angry, fatalistic content that in the short term catches their attention but in the long term turns them off. They are looking for the media to tell nuanced stories and let them make their own minds up.

Only a media industry that represents, hires and understands us can do justice to LGBTQIA+ stories. There is an inherent value in having us in the newsroom. Not just because we’ll be able to tell queer stories. But because we can bring our unique lived experiences to the table – that will shift all kinds of coverage.

Whether it’s the cost of living crisis, or immigration, LGBTQIA+ people have unique perspectives on these broad issues – they won’t be specifically queer, but the richness will add value to a story.

In a world that bombards us with news, we need to find a better way of communicating it. So people understand it. That’s the only way it will ever move people into action. Whether that’s buying memberships – or affecting policy. That approach is working for us at QueerAF, and we hope to see much more of it in the rest of the media too.

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If you would like to learn more about the Impress Standards Code, click here or email info@impressorg.com.