Sexuality in the News: Why Conflict Wins

Search a news aggregator for the word sex and the results tend to be dominated by crime, assault and scandal. A commentator on a Canadian sex-positive site argued that this pattern reflects how the news business works rather than how the public thinks.

Controversy attracts readers, and a controversy with a sexual element attracts even more. The piece used a school health booklet dispute in Nova Scotia to show how a small number of objections can receive large amounts of attention.

How a handful of voices becomes a story

A newsroom tends to notice a loud protest, whatever its size. On questions of sexuality, the commentator observed, a few critics can win prominent coverage with little context and sometimes little cause.

The common gaps are easy to list. Reports may not say how many people hold a view, what motivates it, or how it compares with the opinions of the wider community. Without that background, readers can mistake a small group for a mainstream one.

The Nova Scotia booklet

The example involved a health booklet written for Grade 5 students and used in Nova Scotia schools. According to the commentator, it had circulated for many years without trouble.

Objections surfaced after a redesign added material on female sexual arousal and on sexual orientation, including transgender identities. According to the commentator, only a few parents contacted their school board, yet local outlets gave the complaints noticeable space.

What the coverage left out

The commentator pointed out that the booklet had always described the physical responses of male bodies without any protest. The complaints concentrated on the passage about girls, a pattern that the reports never examined.

The text in question gave a plain biological account of arousal and described those feelings as a normal part of puberty. Reporters, the author argued, could have explored why the objectors singled out that section.

Newsworthiness and fringe opinion

The article argued that outlets rarely build stories around other views held by very few people, so similar restraint could apply to small groups of objectors on sexuality topics.

Media scholars have long described a related tendency, in which conflict and alarm are favoured over steady, ordinary developments. The case illustrates that tendency, while also showing why health educators sometimes feel that public discussion of their materials is shaped by the loudest few.