On Friday, June 9th in Bengaluru, Queer Chronicles Chennai (QCC) and The News Minute (TNM) released The Inqlusive Newsrooms LGBTQIA+ Media Reference Guide, a media reference guide for journalists and newsrooms reporting, writing, or editing stories about LGBTQIA+ communities, persons, and issues. The guide will be further translated into Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Hindi and Marathi with training sessions soon to be held all over the country. Probably the first of its kind for India, the guide’s 90+ pages are interspersed with guidelines on dealing with various beats on topics ranging from crime, politics, education, health, entertainment, among many more. It also includes the basics for reporters, editors, commissioning editors, and opinion writers.
A majority of people behind the guide also are a part of the queer community themselves, which is crucial as it maintains the norms of representation – one of the signs of inclusive newsrooms. The primary reason(s) behind the curation of the guide is the lack of accurate representation of queer lives in news India, often running into themes that are ignorant and discriminatory or inconsiderate of outing queer people to the public, thereby putting them at risk. It provides to the journalist’s arsenal a toolkit about what are the correct terms to use and what kind of depictions can be problematic. This comes at a particularly decisive time as channels across the country have been covering the debate around the ongoing case in the Supreme Court of India about the validity of same-sex marriage(s), and the rights of marriage equality for queer people. Unfortunately, many media outlets have reported the coverage insensitively, at times using derogatory language, misgendering or misrepresenting the facts related to the queer community and their rights in India. Additionally, the guide touches on sensitive issues like how to report at the intersection of faith, gender and sexuality.
With a foreword from Saurabh Kripal, the guide also contains a rich glossary of terms related to sex, to gender, and to sexuality; along with umbrella/collective terms and other terms used by the community. Supported by Google News Initiative, other interesting aspects of the reference guide includes sections on ‘Historical queerphobia and underrepresentation of LGBTQIA+ persons in Science’ and ‘What science says about transgender and intersex athletes,’ the latter of which aims to educate about the sensitivity required in reporting while also maintaining accuracy of facts and the current acceptable understanding on issues related to gender and sexuality.
The guide is a part of the continuous efforts byQueer Chennai Chronicles (QCC), an independent publishing forum which has consistently worked to highlight the voices of queer writers and translators within literary spaces. One of the project lead on the guide, Ragamalika Karthikeyan told The News Minute, “The objective of the guide is [to educate] journalists and newsrooms about the right language to use for LGBTQIA+ persons and communities, with chapters addressing questions that journalists in different roles have…”. The News Minute also has been widely noted as a feminist media organization spearheading sensitive journalism on gender, sexuality and caste, and the guide is a much-applauded and welcome step.
The Inqlusive Newsrooms LGBTQIA+ Media Reference Guide can be accessed here. Please do read and share it widely.
