Popular Searches
Communication
As part of its Faculty Focus, Staff Spotlight and After Hours series, Marquette Today is sharing weekly features during Pride Month highlighting faculty and staff whose work supports and connects with members of the LGBTQ+ community. Recognizing the rich history and traditions of Marquette as a Catholic, Jesuit institution, these stories reflect a commitment to acknowledging and cherishing the dignity of each individual. “We would like before all else to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence.” — Pope Francis
Developed in collaboration with the LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Group — open to all members of the Marquette community — the series highlights how faculty and staff put this commitment into practice through their work, fostering spaces for dialogue, support and growth across the university community.
Thirty years ago, 53% of Americans reported having a great deal of trust in mass media, per Gallup. Now, that number has been nearly cut in half to an all-time low of 28%.
This problem keeps Dr. Patrick Johnson, assistant professor of journalism and media studies, engaged in his research. Johnson analyzes journalism literacy, practice and education through the lens of gender and sexuality, with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ representation.
Johnson recently published a white paper on LGBTQ+ news avoidance, the first paper of its kind. The paper examines the shortcomings in journalists’ portrayals of LGBTQ+ people and the impact of LGBTQ+ representation on other groups’ trust in the news.
Johnson spoke with Marquette Today about his white paper and the degree to which this research was personal, not just professional.
You spent a year researching news avoidance in LGBTQ+ communities and audience attitudes toward LGBTQ+ representation. What are some of the things you’ve found during that process?
I worked with Trusting News, a journalism support organization dedicated to cultivating trust in news, to train journalists to listen to members of their communities, which also helped to collect data for the research process. I was particularly trying to learn why news consumers were disengaged when it came to LGBTQ+ content and communities in the news.
What this project shows is that avoidance is feedback and a lot of that feedback comes from historical harm. This includes a couple of things: (1) LGBTQ+ individuals anticipate harm in journalism before they even read the content based on how outlets and story types have already covered them; (2) both-sides structures and sensational headlines leave LGBTQ+ audiences exposed to harm – it is a pattern the audience learns and it leads to an integrity problem; (3) LGBTQ+ audiences then selectively engage because they equated the controlled engagement to their safety; (4) buzzwords and specialized terms come with accountability, so journalists must be define them and explain their processes; (5) repairing that harm needs to be public; and (6) journalism needs to choose joy. This was my favorite finding; LGBTQ+ community members and allies wanted more coverage that included thriving, ordinary life, competence and community resilience.
This project came from another project I did with Dr. Sue Robinson at UW-Madison, where we learned why different groups don’t trust the news and why they disengage. Part of what we learned is that the reasons across demographic and political groups aren’t as different as people assume.
One of the things that our survey found across people who distrust news from conservative groups, as well as racial minority communities, was a dislike of LGBTQ ideas and people. There’s a link between those attitudes and the broader rollbacks of DEI, specifically when it came to pride marketing materials, queer love, LGBTQ+ content in schools, and trans identities in sports. That had me thinking about why, which in turn led me to this project.
You have the unique experience of having your research not just be a part of your professional identity, but part of your personal one as well. Could you describe what that’s like for you?
Who I am cannot be absent from the work I do. When I read some of this feedback in this research, saying that a group I identify with is horrible, and that people hate them, or asking journalists to stop talking to them, I don’t get to walk away from it. I have to sit there and listen, over and over again, to people we interviewed telling me that people like me don’t belong.
There’s a balance between play and pain. My research involves being in this painful space where you read geographic, racial, political, religious or gender-diverse work that says you don’t belong or that you shouldn’t exist. I have to figure out how to make sense of that. I have to figure out where I am welcome in research, the classroom, the community and media. That’s where the play comes in: I have to find the joy; I have to make the sandbox where all are welcome to exist.
The light at the end of the tunnel is that not many people do this work. I have the opportunity, despite the pain, to create strong shoulders for future people like me. I get to create training and development materials that help newsrooms improve. I get to create opportunities for a more equitable experience for journalists and improve educational experiences so that curricula can be better. I do the work today so that tomorrow can be better.
How does a newsroom balance the ethical responsibility of listening to its audience with its own obligation to honor the humanity of their subjects and treat them with respect?
When I talk to my classes about objectivity, I tell them it doesn’t really exist.
One thing I found is that many journalists covering LGBTQ+ issues didn’t really know what they were talking about when it came to LGBTQ+ issues. They used a lot of incorrect vocabulary, and they let the angry or sensationalized story be the only one told. For instance, a lot of journalists talked about trans athlete bans, and that was their only LGBTQ+ coverage. They didn’t choose joy a lot of the time; they talked mostly about pain, even when they had no problem choosing joy for other groups of people. Exposing that side of LGBTQ+ communities or other marginalized communities could be one way to balance those obligations.
When we talk institutionally about being a social justice-driven place, other LGBTQ+ scholars and I doing this work are beacons of that value. I developed a theory of ethics grounded in our values and mission, centered on restorative justice. It is called Restorative Queer Ethics, and it is a way of understanding how we have to let the ghosts of the past sit with us for a little bit. It is about advocacy in journalism, and the ways journalism can also be reflexive and responsible for correcting the past. It takes social justice to the next level; it makes us think more about care for the whole person and men and women for others throughout history.
Do you think journalists can help their audiences become more tolerant toward LGBTQ+ people through featuring them in their work?
I’m a blissful optimist. I think a lot of people would say no, but I want to say yes. The reason I want to say yes is that I see journalists in a philosophically different way than a lot of other people. I don’t see them as just an information vehicle; we are educators. I tell students that journalists are the second-greatest educators in the world, next to teachers. What do teachers do? They live in their communities, they cultivate cultures of learning and knowledge and they spend time and energy becoming experts in their areas.
We need to get people to view the work of journalism as a beacon of learning and education, rather than just information, because one carries much more purpose and weight than the other. There’s some restorative justice that can be done through that education. And that’s a future I want to believe in.
Research & Innovation
Summer Faculty Fellowship and Regular Research Grants applications open
University Initiatives
Register for upcoming GROW classes
Research & Innovation
Numbers, Facts, and Insights
© 2026 Marquette Today. All rights reserved.
Leave a Reply