When do journalists write about sex? When should we?
I tried to figure this out for a workshop this week at the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention. (Why? Because I heard the NLGJA throws a fabulous convention and I really, really wanted to go. I offered to do a workshop on rape. Too narrow, they said. So here I am on my way to Hollywood to talk about writing about sex. But instead of staying for the whole convention, which includes some incredible party at a way cool Hollywood club, I’m flying home early to go to a teddy-bear picnic with my three-year-old daughter, Maggie. All this is to say I may be the least likely person to be writing about sex.)
As part of my preparation for this workshop I did a completely unscientific study of the archives of seven daily newspapers: the St. Petersburg Times, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and The Plain Dealer.
All I did was search all the articles that mention “sex” in a one-month period. I picked sites with working search engines and typed in, “sex.” Then I tallied the context in which that three-letter word was used. Here’s what I found:
10. The tenth most popular occasion for mentioning the word sex is so columnists can describe someone as a “sex-kitten.” These stories are not about sex at all but about topics ranging from golf to local personalities.
9. Writing about the Internet and pornography. I was surprised this was so low on the list. I predicted Internet and pornography would be separate categories. But I had to combine them just to beat the sex kittens.
8. Abortion was the eighth most popular reason to write about sex. I’m pretty sure only a very small percentage of abortion stories mention sex.
7. Health issues. Most of these stories mentioned sexually transmitted diseases, although some of them made only a tangential mention of the topic.
6. Teen sexuality & abstinence came in sixth. This category would have been just teen sexuality except for all the ink about Al Franken’s abstinence prank on Harvard letterhead.
5. Gender issues came in fifth. This really isn’t about sex itself but more typically about sex discrimination and similar issues. I left it on my list because I like stories about gender issues.
4. Gay issues. This is like the abortion category. Only a few stories about gay life and gay issues include a mention of sex. Most of these stories touched on the debate over marriage.
3. Tied with gay issues was the category I dubbed adult relationships. This mostly included advice columns or stories about advice columnists.
I should point out the eight categories above accounted for less than 15 percent of all the stories in the search. The numbers are too small to lend much significance to the order of the ranking.
Here are the big two reasons most of the stories mention the word sex:
2. Sex crimes. For my thoughts on this category, see this list.
1. The context that provokes most mentions of sex involves coverage of the Entertainment world. This does not just mean television and movies. There were a lot of book reviews talking about sex. What was really interesting was that most of the stories in this category (about 60 percent) were about fictional characters, including the star of the movie “Thirteen.”
My big conclusion: The mainstream secular media is mostly concerned with the sex lives of criminals and made-up people!
Is this how sex should be represented by mainstream newsrooms? Are we missing something in our coverage?
Even though my survey falls short of anything scientific, its results reflect my impression of the state of sex coverage in America today: narrow and limited. I believe journalists are fearful of approaching this topic with depth and complexity because they lack the language and confidence to create meaningful stories.
Is it possible that, because our categories are so limited and so skewed toward crime and entertainment, we are overlooking stories that would delve into the richness and nuance of human relationships?
In fact, sex is a great topic for journalists. We have police reporters and medical reporters. How come no sex reporters?
