We often hear about U.S. LGBT friendly media such as LOGO and here! and recently discussed UK Channel 4’s gay programming in a post last week. Jumping to the other side of the globe, China has announced the first openly gay host of a mainland news series on homosexuality.
According to Xinhua News Agency, Didier Zhang, a 27 year old gay man, was selected as host from a pool of 800 applicants. This level of visibility is certainly a big step for conservative China, which only removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders in 2001.
The show seeks to be educational to a heterosexual audience, which should help reduce the “only” 5.2 percent of respondents to a Phoenix satellite TV survey of Chinese citizens who saw homosexuality as abnormal. 83 percent of participants listed homosexuality as “understandable.”
The show will run exclusively online on the Phoenix satellite TV site. The first episode ran yesterday and
included an interview with the owner of a lesbian bar.
While this is a responsible first step for increased LGBT visibility in Chinese media it raises comparative questions of why similar hosting opportunities in U.S. broadcast news do not exist. Yes there are gay hosts of gay cable news programs, but will an (out) LGBT host follow in CNN’s Thomas Roberts footsteps by breaking into mainstream U.S. news?
We’ve all heard the speculation of certain TV news hosts thanks to the current issue of Out magazine. Perhaps an out gay correspondent for one of a broadcast news progam would be able to educate and continue to boost the number of representative gay faces in the media.
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