Gay Newsmen – A Clearer Picture

Jason Bellini: That's not honest.

The youngest reporter who spoke to AfterElton.com, and one who may indicate a happy generational shift, is Jason Bellini, correspondent and host of CBS News on Logo (Logo is AfterElton.com's parent company.). Out in press interviews since the beginning of his career in 2000, Bellini nonetheless continued to get the plum assignments. A correspondent with CNN at the time, Bellini was one of the youngest embedded journalists during the initial 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq.

"We were using technology that was still unproven," Bellini recalled. That created some surreal moments broadcasting on CNN. "I remember being in the sand dunes when there was a small battle going on. And we got our satellite up, and I was broadcasting and thinking to myself, this is really weird. We're going live from the middle of the desert, and there's nothing around for hundreds of miles."

Bellini created his career in news out of sheer daring. In 1999, when the Kosovo war broke out and the U.S. bombing campaign began, Bellini quit his job and traveled to the war zone on his own, hoping to send back stories on spec that he shot on his digital camera and edited on a laptop. While there, he got into the system at CNN and made himself indispensable, quickly working his way up to CNN correspondent.

Bellini's early decision to be out reflects a similar boldness. While other on-camera people still hold onto a controlling attitude about their image, for Bellini the choice was clear-cut: "Skirting that issue, saying it's nobody's business, I think that's disingenuous. Because if people are interested in you outside of the parameters of your job itself, and you ignore [being gay], then you're ignoring an important part of yourself. And that's not honest."

Randy Price: A little bit of collusion.

"The country's first openly gay newscaster" is a line right off Randy Price's official WHDH bio. Possibly the most high-profile anchor in Boston, Price has helmed newscasts and local newsmagazines there for over 20 years. Out to the press since 1996, Price said that when it comes to sexual orientation, "There has always been a little bit of a collusion among media about that kind of stuff being public."

Price experienced that collusion firsthand in the '80s, when he was a young anchor who had already been living with his partner for almost a decade. In newspaper profiles of himself from that time, readers could see him at home with his dog, "all these things about my life. And never one — not one mention — of do I live with anybody, what's the story of my personal situation. … They didn't ask any of those questions because they knew the answers." And Price confessed, "I probably didn't push the point."

Now, 10 years since Price began answering those questions, he is amused that some still see those answers as irrelevant. "People ask that question," Price said. "Like, 'Well, you know, is it really necessary for you to discuss your sexual life with everybody?' And I go, 'Well, you know, I never really thought I was discussing my sex life. … I said I'm a gay person, I live with another guy, and I have a long-term relationship. If I don't tell you that, then there's really no foundation for us having an exchange about who we all are."

Hank Plante: Being gay has made me a better reporter.

Price may very well be the United States' first openly gay television news anchor, but Hank Plante might be its first openly gay television reporter. Plante, political editor of CBS 5 in San Francisco , has been in 11 newsrooms during his career, and he's broken barriers in many of them.

Covering AIDS as an openly gay man in Houston in the early '80s, the hostile feedback Plante received wasn't solely from viewers. "The general manger at the station at the time didn't like our coverage, didn't like the fact that I was gay," he recalled. "And I ignored him." Covering AIDS in San Francisco soon afterward, Plante took even more fire — some of it from unlikely sources. "People in the gay community said, 'You're making us look bad … they'll think we're all AIDS carriers.'"

Plante won two Emmys and a Peabody for his San Francisco AIDS coverage, and in 2005 was presented with a GLAAD Pioneer Award. Plante sees his sexual orientation as both irrelevant to his job and something that informs it. "Being gay has made me a better reporter, just as it's made me a better person," he said. "I don't just see the outside. I know there is a whole life there that I need to be open to."

But despite his own groundbreaking choices, Plante parts with some of the reporters interviewed here, not seeing a connection between his mission as journalist and the choice to be out. However, he has found his own openness earns him respect in interesting ways.

"I'll tell you where it helps me, this transparency," explained Plante, revealing that for a big interview — such as California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger or a U.S. senator — he routinely comes out to his subject before the interview begins. "I just kind of slip it in. 'Oh, you know, I was talking to my domestic partner last night, blah, blah, blah.' … And you know what I find is? It relaxes them. It creates a very honest space, and they're more open to me. … I can't explain it. Something magical happens."

Craig Stevens: I just never let it be that big of a deal.

Miami anchor Craig Stevens heads four newscasts every evening on WSVN and believes that kind of transparency regarding sexual orientation can translate to credibility with viewers as well. "How can you believe someone when there's an inherent deception, a withholding of something about someone [such as being gay]?" he asked.

Stevens thinks the positive reaction he has received as an out anchor comes in part from his own attitude. "If it's this big hand-wringing, sort of tortured decision, I think people feed off your energy," he said. "I just never let it be that big of a deal." But Stevens acknowledged that there's a lot of anxiety out there: "I have friends within the industry who, really, there's this anguish, this fear of what happens" if they come out.

Randol White: I could just feel my blood run cold.

Randol White was afraid. A morning anchor in Madison, Wis., he was sure that if anyone knew he was gay, he would lose everything. Mustering the courage to go to a gay club two hours away in Chicago, White was alarmed when he was recognized in the bar by some Madison viewers. "I could just feel my blood run cold," White recalled.

But the world didn't cave in. And slowly White ventured out more, allowing himself to be recognized in gay bars in Milwaukee, then inside Madison. Eventually White was out to his employers, co-workers and his audience, casually mentioning friends and events during morning-show chat that identified him as gay.

And White said he experienced no negative reaction. Being an "out newscaster," he said, "has been 100 percent positive." Now an anchor on the morning show and the noon newscast for CBS affiliate KCOY in Santa Barbara, Calif., White connects his choice to be out to something he heard openly gay Wisconsin representative Tammy Baldwin say: "If you want to live in a world where you can hold your boyfriend's hand walking down the street, then hold your boyfriend's hand walking down the street."

White said: "I think that's such a powerful statement. Because you have to do it, for it to ever be accepted."

AfterElton.com continues profiling these out journalists throughout the week on the AfterElton.com blog, highlighting former CNN correspondent Thomas Roberts on Tuesday, Regional News Network anchor Paul Mueller on Wednesday, and more from Miguel Marquez in Iraq on Thursday. Part 2 of this article, a lively discussion with the journalists and network news executives, will be published on May 21. It includes a coming-out interview with one of those executives.