BBC Researches Their Portrayal of the LGB Community

By Ley on Friday, February 5, 2010 - 21:00

Surveys, oh how we gays and lesbians love them. Be it polls, surveys, lists or questionnaires, we love them.

Here at eurOut we even agree that Lists Are Hot and we should all bow down to their awesome-ness.

So, how does the BBC intend to find out how we think we’re being represented on their television channels? Through an online questionnaire! (Clever Mr BBC for trying to know your audience… trying to, at least.) The reason for the questionnaire is due to its recent number of incidents in the past year of portraying the community negatively and offensively at times by some of their radio and television presenters.

On January 22^nd, the BBC announced that it had been commissioned to carry out research:

… to help us gain a deeper understanding into how the lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) community are portrayed across all our services.

Wow, I have to say I was partly shocked and excited, and partly uneasy about the whole thing. Understandably the happy part out-weighed the level of unease, but I have to admit it was there. Maybe I’m simply being cagey and sceptical, but we’ll find out in a few months if I was right to feel this way or not.

The research will look at their current portrayal of the LGB community on television, radio, and online. The Chair of the BBC Working Group on Portrayal and Inclusion of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Audiences, Tim Davie, has stated that:

We'll ask people their views on language, tone, stereotyping, on screen talent, humour and scheduling to name just a few areas, and I'm sure we’ll uncover many others that will deepen our understanding of you.

This is the most comprehensive piece of research ever carried out in this area by the BBC and we're doing it because, as a public service broadcaster, we have a responsibility to serve all of our audiences and it's vital that we reflect the differences among all of the UK's diverse communities, nations and regions.

Ah, now, remember my reservations about this? I now know why… this headline. When you open up a paper and in big bold print read: “BBC to ask homophobes what they think of its coverage of gay people”, it can make you feel a little uneasy. Don’t get me wrong, it would be highly hypocritical of me to say homophobic people shouldn’t be included in voicing their opinions when we fight for our voice to be heard, but surely they’re just going to say there’s too much of it and it shouldn’t be shown at all?

As you go through the questions, it requires you to type out responses to the questions, rather than simply clicking a box that ranges from 1-5 of levels of importance. This is definitely a good thing. It actually gives the person taking part, space to voice their true opinion and not simply fit a mould of what a board of suits thinks their answer should be.