ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraqi media outlets are failing to meet basic journalistic standards when it comes to coverage of LGBT+ people, according to a new study by Iraq's first national LGBT+ organisation. “Though Iraqi media outlets have started covering LGBT+ issues in the last 10 years, they are not yet using their platforms to meet these responsibilities. Just the opposite,” reads the report published by IraQueer at the end of June. “The majority of media coverage today is biased against the LGBT+ community, reinforcing discriminatory ideas that LGBT+ individuals are alien to Iraqi society, and that LGBT+ identities are ailments that must be treated and eradicated,” adds the report, which references special effects such as dangerous sounding music being overlaid on most television programming about LGBT+ people. The search results from IraQueer’s research reveals that most Iraqi media continues to use derogatory terms to refer to people of diverse genders and sexualities or their actions, including but not limited to the Arabic words for “abnormal”, “shemale”. The organization did observe a slower positive trend of the more neutral “Mujtamaa Al-Meem”, which translates to the LGBT+ community, starting to be used. Moreover, coverage tends to amplify the voices of societal leaders speaking perjoratively of LGBT+ people, rather than LGBT+ people themselves. “In the rare occasion when they hosted LGBT+ speakers, the majority of them were coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, lacking the educational skills, the financial stability, and the political and social protection” to effectively counter influential leaders, reads the report. Amir Ashour, founder and executive director at IraQueer, told Rudaw English that “the story of what it really means to be LGBT+, and what we as a community are asking for is almost never addressed.” “We are often portrayed as villains and a danger to society when in reality, we are some of the people who face the most danger in Iraq,” Ashour told Rudaw English over email on Saturday. While gay men are more visible than LGBT+ women and other identities in the Iraqi media, there is “confusion and misinformation around identities belonging to the LGBT+ community as media outlets and personnel are still unable to differentiate between what it means to be gay and what it means to be trans, for example,” he said. Despite media coverage being mostly negative and ripe with misinformation, Ashour says it is “better than no coverage,” because it informs LGBT+ people themselves that organizations that can support them like IraQueer exist.
