Morality or equality? Ideological framing in news coverage of gay marriage legitimization

This content analytic study investigated the approaches of two mainstream newspapers—The New York Times and theChicago Tribune—to cover the gay marriage issue. The study used the Massachusetts legitimization of gay marriage as a dividing point to look at what kinds of specific political or social topics related to gay marriage were highlighted in the news media. The study examined how news sources were framed in the coverage of gay marriage, based upon the newspapers’ perspectives and ideologies. The results indicated that The New York Times was inclined to emphasize the topic of human equality related to the legitimization of gay marriage. After the legitimization, The New York Times became an activist for gay marriage. Alternatively, the Chicago Tribune highlighted the importance of human morality associated with the gay marriage debate. The perspective of the Chicago Tribune was not dramatically influenced by the legitimization. It reported on gay marriage in terms of defending American traditions and family values both before and after the gay marriage legitimization. Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of Western Social Science Association. Gay marriage has been a controversial issue in the United States, especially since the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court officially authorized it. Although the practice has been widely discussed for several years, the acceptance of gay marriage does not seem to be concordant with mainstream American values. This is in part because gay marriage challenges the traditional value of the family institution. In the United States, people’s perspectives of and attitudes toward gay marriage have been mostly polarized. Many people optimistically ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected], [email protected] (P.-L. Pan). 0362-3319/$ – see front matter. Published by Elsevier Inc on behalf of Western Social Science Association. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2010.02.002 P.-L. Pan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 630–645 631 support gay legal rights and attempt to legalize it in as many states as possible, while others believe legalizing homosexuality may endanger American society and moral values. A number of forces and factors may expand this divergence between the two polarized perspectives, including family, religion and social influences. Mass media have a significant influence on socialization that cultivates individual’s belief about the world as well as affects individual’s values on social issues (Comstock & Paik, 1991). Moreover, news media outlets become a strong factor in influencing people’s perceptions of and attitudes toward gay men and lesbians because the news is one of the most powerful media to influence people’s attitudes toward gay marriage (Anderson, Fakhfakh, & Kondylis, 1999). Some mainstream newspapers are considered as media elites (Lichter, Rothman, & Lichter, 1986). Furthermore, numerous studies have demonstrated that mainstream newspapers would produce more powerful influences on people’s perceptions of public policies and political issues than television news (e.g., Brians & Wattenberg, 1996; Druckman, 2005; Eveland, Seo, & Marton, 2002) Gay marriage legitimization, a specific, divisive issue in the political and social dimensions, is concerned with several political and social issues that have raised fundamental questions about Constitutional amendments, equal rights, and American family values. The role of news media becomes relatively important while reporting these public debates over gay marriage, because not only do the news media affect people’s attitudes toward gays and lesbians by positively or negatively reporting the gay and lesbian issue, but also shape people’s perspectives of the same-sex marriage policy by framing the recognition of gay marriage in the news coverage. The purpose of this study is designed to examine how gay marriage news is described in the news coverage of The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune based upon their divisive ideological framings. 1. Literature review 1.1. Homosexual news coverage over time Until the 1940s, news media basically ignored the homosexual issue in the United States (Alwood, 1996; Bennett, 1998). According to Bennett (1998), of the 356 news stories about gays and lesbians that appeared in Time and Newsweek from 1947 to 1997, the Kinsey report on male sexuality published in 1948 was the first to draw reporters to the subject of homosexuality. From the 1940s to 1950s, the homosexual issue was reported as a social problem. Approximately 60% of the articles described homosexuals as a direct threat to the strength of the U.S. military, the security of the U.S. government, and the safety of ordinary Americans during this period. By the 1960s, the gay and lesbian issue began to be discussed openly in the news media. However, these portrayals were covered in the context of crime stories and brief items that ridiculed effeminate men or masculine women (Miller, 1991; Streitmatter, 1993). In 1963, a cover story, “Let’s Push Homophile Marriage,” was the first to treat gay marriage as a matter of winning legal recognition (Stewart-Winter, 2006). However, this cover story did not cause people to pay positive attention to gay marriage, but raised national debates between punishment and pity of homosexuals. Specifically speaking, although numerous arti632 P.-L. Pan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 630–645 cles reported before the 1960s provided growing visibility for homosexuals, they were still highly critical of them (Bennett, 1998). In September 1967, the first hard-hitting gay newspaper—the Los Angeles Advocate—began publication. Different from other earlier gay and lesbian publications, its editorial mix consisted entirely of non-fiction materials, including news stories, editorials, and columns (Cruikshank, 1992; Streitmatter, 1993). The Advocate was the first gay publication to operate as an independent business financed entirely by advertising and circulation, rather than by subsidies from a membership organization (Streitmatter, 1995a, 1995b). After the Stonewall Rebellion in June 1969 in New York City ignited the modern phase of the gay and lesbian liberation movement, the number and circulation of the gay and lesbian press exploded (Streitmatter, 1998). Therefore, gay rights were discussed in the news media during the early 1970s. Homosexuals began to organize a series of political actions associated with gay rights, which was widely covered by the news media, while a backlash also appeared against the gay-rights movements, particularly among fundamentalist Christians (Alwood, 1996; Bennett, 1998). Later in the 1970s, the genre entered a less political phrase by exploring the dimensions of the developing culture of gay and lesbian. The news media plumbed the breadth and depth of topics ranging from the gay and lesbian sensibility in art and literature to sex, spirituality, personal appearance, dyke separatism, lesbian mothers, drag queen, leather men, and gay bathhouses (Streitmatter, 1995b). In the 1980s, the gay and lesbian issue confronted a most formidable enemy when AIDS/HIV, one of the most devastating diseases in the history of medicine, began killing gay men at an alarming rate. Accordingly, AIDS/HIV became the biggest gay story reported by the news media. Numerous news media outlets linked the AIDS/HIV epidemic with homosexuals, which implied the notion of the promiscuous gay and lesbian lifestyle. The gays and lesbians, therefore, were described as a dangerous minority in the news media during the 1980s (Altman, 1986; Cassidy, 2000). In the 1990s, issues about the growing visibility of gays and lesbians and their campaign for equal rights were frequently covered in the news media, primarily because of AIDS and the debate over whether the ban on gays in the military should be lifted. The increasing visibility of gay people resulted in the emergence of lifestyle magazines (Bennett, 1998; Streitmatter, 1998). The Out, a lifestyle magazine based in New York City but circulated nationally, led the new phase, since its upscale design and fashion helped attract mainstream advertisers. This magazine, which devalued news in favor of stories on entertainment and fashions, became the first gay and lesbian publication sold in mainstream bookstores and featured on the front page of The New York Times (Streitmatter, 1998). From the late 1990s to the first few years of the 2000s, homosexuals were described as a threat to children’s development as well as a danger to family values in the news media. The legitimacy of same-sex marriage began to be discussed, because news coverage dominated the issue of same-sex marriage more frequently than before (Bennett, 1998). According to Gibson (2004), The New York Times first announced in August 2002 that its Sunday Styles section would begin publishing reports of same-sex commitment ceremonies along with the traditional heterosexual wedding announcements. Moreover, many newspapers joined this trend. Gibson (2004) found that not only the national newspapers, such as The New York Times, but also other regional newspapers, such as the Houston Chronicle and the Seattle Times, reported surprisingly large P.-L. Pan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 630–645 633 number of news stories about the everyday lives of gays and lesbians, especially since the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in November 2003 that same-sex couples had the same right to marry as heterosexuals. Previous studies investigated the increased amount of news coverage of gay and lesbian issues in the past six decades, but they did not analyze how homosexuals are framed in the news media in terms of public debates on the gay marriage issue. These studies failed to examine how newspapers report this national debate on gay marriage as well as what kinds of news frames are used in reporting this controversial issue. 1.2. Framing gay and lesbian partnerships Framing is particularly useful in understanding the media’s role in political lives, but its origins can be traced to a general perspective that is termed as social constructivism (Entman, 1993; Reese, 2003; Scheufele, 1999). According to Price, Nir, and Cappella (2005), media recipients can be viewed as active audiences in interpreting and discussing public events, but they rely on the mass media to provide common frames of references that guide interpretation and discussion. The idea of framing is closely aligned with the concept of a schema. According to Price et al. (2005), a frame is a package of associated ideas that guides people’s attention, comprehension, storage, and information retrieval. Frames evolve out of collective efforts to make sense of social problems and help people locate, perceive, identify, and label their experiences of social events. Through exposure to the different courses of public debate framed in the mass media, people on the different sides of the public debate understand it differently, focus on different aspects of social problems, decide which value to connect to a specific issue, and actively shape their perspectives on the debate in terms of an abstract value (Brewer, 2002; Kindler & Sanders, 1996; Nelson, Clawson, & Oxley, 1997; Price et al., 2005). Previous studies indicated that issues surrounding gay rights have been controversial for several decades. Since the 2000 presidential election campaign, the question of whether gay and lesbian partnerships should be granted the same legal status as heterosexual marriages has received more coverage than before (Price et al., 2005). Following George Bush’s election to the presidency, the controversies over gay marriage continued, highlighted by the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling in 2003 that same-sex couples were legally entitled to marriage rights under that state’s constitution. Consequently, the U.S. Congress began debating a constitutional ban on gay marriage that was supported by President Bush. The bulk of studies found that the news coverage of the legal standing of gay marriage is framed in terms of two core values: morality and equality (e.g., Brewer, 2002, 2003; Gallagher & Bull, 1996; Rimmerman, Kenneth, & Wilcox, 2000). These studies demonstrated that the news coverage focuses on equal rights commonly invoked by gay activists. The news coverage frames gay activists as those who intend to obtain full marital status for same-sex partnerships because marriages are involved in both religious and legal standing. According to Brewer (2002), these gay and lesbian activists are inclined to constitute a politically powerful minority group. Their goal is to attain full social acceptance of homosexuality by using the legal system to reinforce their view of morality. By contrast, opponents strive to frame the matter in terms of “traditional moral values,” emphasizing that legally granting the martial status for samesex partnerships may cause problems to the long-standing social and religious institutions of 634 P.-L. Pan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 630–645 marriage and family. Further, most opponents of gay rights are inclined to use “gay civil unions” rather than “gay marriage” in describing gay and lesbian partnerships. The two kinds of frames that concern the two core values most frequently appear in the news coverage of gay marriage, especially during the presidential campaign in the fall of 2000 (Price et al., 2005). It is evidence that whereas opponents of gay rights emphasize morals and family values, supporters highlight equality as a basic value, and counter that hate is not one of the family values. The current study examines whether the debates over the gay marriage legitimization are framed by news organizational ideologies in terms of equal rights versus morality. Furthermore, it explores how functional relationships between the gay marriage issue and other political or social issues are ideologically framed and investigates the most frequently used news sources in the news coverage of gay marriage as well as the changes in the reporting patterns of gay marriage news during gay marriage legitimization in the state of Massachusetts. Moreover, it is important to specifically investigate the ideological framing of two influential newspapers—The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune—on the gay marriage issue, because they are two leading national newspapers in the United States. The study applies ideological differences between Liberalism and Conservatism to examine how gay marriage legitimization is framed by two national newspapers. According to Kerlinger (1984), Liberalism as a set of political, economic, religious, and other social beliefs that emphasizes freedom of the individual, constitutional participatory government and democracy, the rule of law, free negotiation, discussion and tolerance of different views, constructive social progress and change, egalitarianism and the rights of minorities, secular and rational approaches to social problems, and positive government action to remedy social deficiencies and to improve human welfare. By contrast, Conservatism is viewed as a set of political, economic, religious, and other social beliefs characterized by emphasis on the status quo and social stability, religion and morality, liberty and freedom, the nature of inequality of human beings, self-discipline and sanctity, the uncertainty of progress, obedience to authority, and the weakness of human reason. The ideologies can reflect differences between The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. The bulk of studies have indicated that The New York Times is inclined to employ a liberal tone to frame political and social issues (e.g., Angela & Frederick, 1994; Lichter et al., 1986; Ju, 2005). On the other hand, the Chicago Tribune has been considered as a conservative newspaper (Gallagher, 1998). According to Fraley and Lester-Roushanzamir (2004), by using sources, reliance on police reports, and official statements, the Chicago Tribune’s reporting encouraged the development of a moral panic when fundamental beliefs and institutions were challenged. Therefore, the ideological differences that exist in these two national newspapers can be conceptually applied in this study in order to identify the controversial characteristics of the gay marriage issue. In this vein, four research questions and three hypotheses were proposed in this study: RQ1: Are some specific topics related to gay marriage, such as the Constitution amendments banning gay marriage, equal human rights, American traditions and family institution, and adoption policy for gay and lesbian couples, evenly covered in The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune? P.-L. Pan et al. / The Social Science Journal 47 (2010) 630–645 635 RQ2: Is there an increased number of pro-gay marriage people and homosexuals cited by the two newspapers after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court authorized the license of gay marriage? RQ3: What types of news sources are more frequently used by the two newspapers before and after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legitimized gay marriage? To investigate the ideological perspectives of The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune on the public debate over gay marriage, two hypotheses are also proposed in the following: H1: The New York Times prefers to use liberal sources, whereas the Chicago Tribune employs relatively conservative sources in its news stories, especially after gay and lesbian couples receive legal marital status in the state of Massachusetts. H2: The New York Times frames the gay marriage stories in a positive way, whereas the Chicago Tribune used a negative tone to report the gay marriage stories. Finally, one research question is also formed to examine the general changes of the reporting patterns in the two newspapers: RQ4: Are the patterns of reporting the gay marriage news in the two national newspapers changed during the period of gay marriage legitimization?