Thursday, February 23, 2012

It might be LGBT History Month but there's been little to show for it on CBBC. Perhaps a celebrity appearance or two, but that's about it. And the channel seems as reluctant as ever to discuss homophobia, homophobic bullying and LGBT issues.

Take the summit which took place at Downing street yesterday.

Tim Franks was reporting outside Number 10 for the BBC News channel. He mentioned that the Summit was about tackling homophobia and racism in sport. That was also clear from what Jeremy Hunt said after the meeting. But when Ore reported the summit on Newsround at 3.28pm, and then at 4.25pm, there was nothing mentioned about anti-gay prejudice. The same is true on Newsround's website write-up. The way things are going I doubt that news related to homophobia will ever be reported on Newsround.

Now another example.

We've already seen (blog on 12 Feb 2012) that Newsround avoided broaching Gok Wan's sexuality when he answered questions about what he was like as a 10 year old. Ricky's interview, apparently recorded on the same day, 6th February, was broadcast yesterday. But that was after Gok's three-part Channel 4 series about growing up issues had concluded.

Why, especially in view of the significance of the Channel 4 series, did Newsround wait until yesterday to transmit their interview? And why wasn't the Series even mentioned? I suspect the reason is that CBBC bosses are pandering to bigots who only want kids to know about traditional "family values." After all, the Channel 4 programmes were inclusive.

It almost goes without saying that Newsround hasn't done a single report about teaching LGBT History Month in schools.

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