He who speaks badly, thinks badly and lives badly.
You have to find the right words: words are important!
Nanni Moretti
Dear Editorial Staff,
We strongly urge the media, once again, to become, or return to being, a place and instrument of culture, a driving force of information and not just opinion. The errors made when covering LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) issues and topics are still serious and gross.
The media and the dissemination of information influence the processes of knowledge construction, interpersonal relationships, and, more generally, the process of cultural formation. At a challenging time for our country, both culturally and economically, we ask with firm unity for your return to a culture of truth and accuracy.
The resurgence of violence against LGBT people makes it more urgent than ever for you to research sources and use accurate language when dealing with such sensitive issues.
We quote, for everyone, the dedicated service from Studio Aperto, the news of Italy One, to Lady GaGa's tribute to the suicide of fourteen-year-old Jamey Rodemeyer. The news program spoke of suicide as a result of bullying, carefully avoiding, throughout the entire segment, any honor or respect for the death of a boy who, at just fourteen, decided to take his own life because he was persecuted for being openly bisexual. The truth was ignored, carefully avoided. In this way, one becomes complicit in violence, colludes with the aggressors, and tarnishes the memory of a life ended so prematurely.
Arcigay, in collaboration with the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies, has conducted the first national research on homophobic bullying: Prevention interventions against homophobic bullying, which revealed that 1 in 5 students had heard homophobic insults at school in the last month, and that 1 in 13 students had witnessed physical homophobic attacks (kicks and punches) in the last month. Homophobic bullying exists, and it is, in all fairness, your duty to address it competently and rigorously.
Even the RAI is no stranger to episodes of mistrust, if not outright hostility, toward us. Censorship and erasure of our loved ones and even the fight for our rights reveal this. This is the case, for example, with the disappearance of the famous cowboy kiss from Brokeback Mountain, on Rai 2. The ensuing protests led to the film's rebroadcast, but only late at night. The censored version of the film did, however, reappear on Rai Movie...
More recently, Rai 1 removed a gay marriage from an episode of the German drama “A Cyclone in the Convent,” while several press sources reported that Tg1 heavily edited its report “Gay Marriages in the Waldensian Church,” with cuts that altered its meaning.
In our fluid world, which increasingly seems to coincide with the media world, your role in building a responsible society, striving for equality and respect, is essential. Therefore, Arcigay hopes that the media will once again provide us with the tools of truth necessary for each of us to construct our own symbolic framework for interpreting reality and the world.
Maura Chiulli
National Head of Arcigay Culture
