"Homocidal homosexual." (media coverage of the Versace murder case)(Cover Story)

Hours after Miami Police identified Andrew Cunanan's body, ABC's Ellen received five Emmy nominations. It was an ironic coupling of events. While Ellen DeGeneres may eventually be regarded as one of the greatest public relations representatives the gay community has ever seen, Cunanan will undoubtedly be considered one of the worst.

For three months this spring, the media were captivated by Ellen and its star. They seemed to care about gay men and lesbians, and when the coming-out episode garnered extremely high ratings, it seemed the public cared too. But then Gianni Versace was killed on the steps of his South Beach mansion, and things changed. The media still cared, that's for sure. But instead of cute blonde actresses who make refreshingly honest jokes, they wanted to hear about sick men who sell their bodies for fun and profit.

The media are supposed to hold up a mirror to reflect whom they're reporting on; in the Cunanan case, however, the mirror seemed to reflect the media's own confused perceptions about who gay men are. When the Los Angeles Times wrote a news article on how the media covered the Cunanan story, it arrogantly proclaimed, "The issue is less ill will on the media's part than its struggle to adjust to the rapidly changing mores of the gay community--as if there's an annual gay and lesbian convention where mores are voted on or a collective gay consciousness capable of arriving at a consensus for such a diverse group.

Maybe it's just the way the media deal with sordid slayings. Whatever the reason, gays were demonized once again. The point is not that there wasn't good reporting or that every bit of the omnipresent, obsessive coverage of the shooting was laced with a vicious homophobic subtext. To the contrary. Many of the journalists did a better job uncovering clues than the FBI, and much of the mainstream press was vigilant about not treating the case like a faggot hunt. Nevertheless, ugliness seeped into the newsprint like blood into limestone.

"Homicidal homosexual" is the way Tom Brokaw described Cunanan on the NBC Nightly News. On CNN & Company, anchor Mary Tillotson asked her guests whether serial killers have a "proclivity" for "sexual dysfunction."

"My visceral sense is that the coverage says gayness is all about sex, that sex is perverted and leads to horrible murder," says Leroy Aarons, former president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. Cunanan was, after all, the "gay serial killer" (occasionally he was "allegedly" one).

While letter writers and a few pundits have said, "You'd never call him a Filipino serial killer," no one ever gets to the point: Linking Cunanan's sexual identity to his violent actions is a specious act. By suggesting (or sometimes blatantly saying) that his sexual orientation somehow informed the hideous crimes Cunanan was accused of committing, the media implied that any one's homosexuality can cause them to run around the country blowing off heads, slashing necks, and pounding faces with crowbars. In some reports the message became clear: Violence is just part of the "lifestyle." It was The Great Gatsby meets Cruising.

"It's been a mixed bag," says Liz Tracey, associate communications director for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, a media watchdog group. "Some of it's actually been really good. But a lot of outlets have been taking things without much evidence and just going with them." And it wasn't just the New York Post, which almost daily printed something that deserved an angry press release from GLAAD. Just about every major news organization added to the stack of misinformation.

For many in the media, truth wasn't nearly as important as what they perceived the public expected: wondrous and effervescent stereotypes of serial murderers (one victim was wrapped like a mummy--was Cunanan playing out a sexual fantasy?), spree killers (did AIDS set off his rage?), gay men (many news organizations headed straight for the discos and gay ghettos to profile the community), drag queens (is that how Cunanan's eluding police?), and Filipino altar boys (Cunanan's own father fueled this one, telling the Associated Press, "He is not a high-class male prostitute.... He was an altar boy").

Sadly, another of those expectations is that gay men don't have long-term relationships, let alone life partners. Antonio D'Amico, Versace's lover of 11 years, didn't exist in most of the press until the end of the first week following Versace's murder. Even The New York Times, one of the few newspapers able to keep a controlled and intelligent voice throughout the blitzkrieg, failed to mention D'Amico in its obituary of Versace. Would Ralph Lauren's wife go unmentioned? Or Donna Karan's husband? Elton John's partner got the silent treatment as well. In a widely printed photograph from Versace's funeral, a weeping John is comforted by Princess Diana and a darkhaired man. When the image appeared in the Los Angeles Times and many other papers, the photo captions made no reference to the mysterious man, who happened to be David Furnish, John's longtime partner.

In its story on how the media covered the Versace slaying, the Los Angeles Times explained the omission of Furnish's name by stating, "Until recently, the vast majority of gays did not want to come out publicly; many still don't. Over the past few years, however, a repeated theme within the gay community has been the importance of coming out as a political and social statement."

To ignore information is one thing, but to create it is another. And even the venerable Economist did it. The first newsweekly to appear on the stands with a story about Versace's death declared that the suspect was "a male prostitute." While Cunanan's mother has famously described him as a "high-class homosexual prostitute," there is no reliable evidence that he ever turned tricks. He may have been a gold digger--a "kept boy," even--but he was no whore.

Even quotes from male prostitutes in San Diego who claimed never to have seen Cunanan turning tricks failed to quell the rumors. The San Francisco Chronicle referred to Cunanan as a hooker in a headline. New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams even went so far as to devote a whole article recounting the dubious story of a "friend of a friend" who was propositioned by a man who looked vaguely like Cunanan about the time the fugitive was supposedly hiding out in New York City. According to the story, a man with "Oriental" eyes asked if he could get paid for sex. Must have been Cunanan!

Adams again raised ire the day after the shooting when she wrote a piece insinuating that Versace's lifestyle somehow contributed to his downfall. She referred to his favorite haunts as what "the uptight might refer to as dens of iniquity ... joints where a second date was only a phrase, not a reality." It was at places like these or maybe at parties in the Hamptons (a weekend getaway spot on New York's Long Island) or in the VIP lounge at the San Francisco Opera--as Vanity Fair seems to think--that the media wanted Versace to have met his killer.

The newshounds were desperate to find a way to connect Cunanan to the supposed sleazy world of Versace and other rich gay men that make up what is called the Velvet Mafia. When Newsweek reported that Cunanan had attended a "small party" at Versace's house two days before the killing, that seemed to prove that the two were sinisterly connected. The magazine I s source was proved false a day after the article appeared on newsstands, but such mistakes didn't seem to matter. Even as the days wore on and it became more clear that Versace had led a much more subdued lifestyle, not one news organization apologized for what they had assumed: that gay men with money inhabit a highly secret underworld rife with shady drug dealers, flamboyant boy-buying fashion designers, and sadomasochistic sex, sex, sex.

Even lesbian writer Achy Obejas, of the Chicago Tribune, had a part in it, filing a fascinating but sordid report from Miami Beach describing leather-clad genitals, the tweaking of nipples, and hustlers who weren't losing any business because of the incident. "I tried to capture the scene," she says. " The scene is wild and over-the-top." But whether the scene had anything to do with the killing has yet to be proved.

If party boys and disco balls are the first things Americans think of when they hear the word "gay," certainly AIDS is the second. The media went after that angle too. Even before the rumor was given a tidbit of credibility by the AIDS counselor who said he had talked with Cunanan in the spring, several "experts" were speculating in print and on television that Cunanan's discovering he was HIV-positive may have led to his rampage. In the mystical ether world inhabited only by news editors, somehow the speculation was transformed into fact. (The loopiest headline was New York Post's AIDS FUELS HIS FURY.)

The problem with this is obvious: When was the last time you heard about a heterosexual serial killer raping the headless bodies of cheerleaders just because he had AIDS? As Jim Graham, executive director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic, an AIDS service organization in Washington, D.C., told The Washington Post--in one of the few tempered, smart analyses of this story--"It is as conceivable that he has a sixth toe." The Miami Herald's health writer wrote, "It was a naked reminder that 16 years after AIDS seeped into the national consciousness, the virus is still seen through a prism of fear and misunderstanding." The speculation continued until August 1, when the Herald quoted anonymous law enforcement officials as saying that an autopsy of Cunanan's body showed he was HIV-negative.

Equally misunderstood, it seemed, were the clues Cunanan left behind. When the police found clippers and hair shavings in Cunanan's abandoned hotel room, they concluded he was shaving off his body hair. Then a tourist gave the police a videotape of a man in drag standing outside Versace's home several days after the shooting. ("I saw the tape," Tracey says. "It looked nothing like him.")

Those two events together made law enforcement officials conclude that Cunanan may have been posing as a woman to escape capture. Those same officials changed their minds within two days--he was probably in casual men's clothing, they then said--but by that time the media were too fascinated with the prospect of a serial killer wandering around in a wig and a print sundress to stop talking about it.

Sightings of a cross-dressed Cunanan became progressively bizarre. "Someone ... spotted Mr. Cunanan in a peach dress in the Publix supermarket, pushing his cart along the narrow aisles, eyeing produce and cereal boxes," reported The New York Times. One CBS morning news telecast showed pictures of what Cunanan might look like as a woman. The images were later reprinted in the Chicago Tribune, looking very much like "before" and "after" shots from some makeover gone terribly wrong.

For the record, Cunanan was found dead in a pair of boxer shorts. He still had dark hair, according to the caretaker who spotted him aboard the houseboat.

The media bumbled along to the bitter end. MSNBC was the only national news channel to cover the stakeout of the houseboat where Cunanan's body was eventually found, but neither the anchor nor the correspondent on the scene noticed the SWAT team storming the boat. The viewers saw it, but the talking heads didn't mention the event for ten minutes. They spent the time interviewing the host of TV's America's Most Wanted, John Walsh, who in a July 24 interview with Entertainment Tonight made the chilling statement, "[Cunanan] crossed the line from killing gay people for revenge and started killing innocent bystanders."

It was a fitting finale for the saga. For in the end this story wasn't about a crazed killer and his five victims. For much of the news media, it was about giving Americans a glimpse into a world they've never understood--and perhaps understand even less now. America has shown an interest in the lives of gay men and lesbians, and the media has an obligation to put them into the mix of everyday coverage. To take the actions of one disturbed individual and use it as a news peg to report on an often misinterpreted group is dangerous and irresponsible.

RELATED ARTICLE: GLAAD'S Dos & don'ts for the media

Following the murder of Gianni Versace, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation issued these guidelines for reporting on the Cunanan investigations

Do not identify someone as a "gay killer." The term links sexual orientation with the crime. In the case of Andrew Cunanan, one would be outraged to see "Filipino killer."

Do not mention the gay or lesbian angle only when a story is negative. Historically, a criminal who happens to be gay has been identified as a "gay criminal." A heterosexual murderer would never be coined a "straight murderer."

Do not demonize the victim. Often, the private life of the individual is sensationally scrutinized in the same paragraph as that of the accused. Some have begun to demonize Versace, a well-respected man, on the basis of his sexual orientation.

Do not use the label admitted homosexual or avowed homosexual, Lesbian, gay, or openly lesbian or openly gay will I suffice.

Do not refer to a gay "lifestyle." The word implies something casual and changeable. Being lesbian or gay is as fundamental as heterosexuality. Just as there is no straight lifestyle, there is no gay "lifestyle."

Do not stereotype lesbians and gay men by focusing on particular segments of the population. Coverage of pride events often centers around transgendered persons or those in leather, misrepresenting the diversity of gays and lesbians.

Do explore the life of a well-respected figure such as Gianni Versace. The positive contributions made by the victim are often lost.

Do list the name of a partner of many years in a lesbian's or a gay man's obituary. Recognize that it is unfair to defer automatically to the biological family. Versace had a life partner, Antonio D'Amico, of 11 years.

Do use the term sexual orientation instead of sexual preference or alternative lifestyle. Most authorities agree that a person's sexual orientation is established at a very young age and cannot be changed.

Do include the voices of someone who is lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered when reporting issues affecting our communities. More than one view should be solicited, since our communities are so diverse.