The Top Story: Salt Lake City's no-affection zone, the Main Street Plaza

In a storm that combined the issues of separation of Church and State, the Mormon Church's work against equal rights for gays and the double standard that queer people face every day, the arrest of Matt Aune and Derek Jones grabbed the attention of gay blogs this week.

Jones and Aune shared a hug and a kiss in Salt Lake City's Main Street Plaza and were approached by a security guard who told them to leave because their behavior was inappropriate. Feeling "targeted", they refused and the guard forcibly detained them and had them arrested for trespassing.

So, who took a look at this story and had a notable take on the incident? Let's count them down.

The ACLU of Utah

Part of the story is the controversial history of the Main Street Plaza which, according to reports, is a major part of Salt Lake City's downtown and an important pedestrian passageway but is private property. The ACLU of Utah has long fought the church from owning a public space and now that battle has gained national attention. The civil rights organization has since created a resource page on the issue, which helps anyone looking to better understand the issue to become better informed.

GLAAD

GLAAD put its Media Matters hat on this week and compared the local news' coverage and noticed a difference in how two Mormon-Church-owned media outlets NBC affiliate KSL-TV and the Deseret News reported the story differently. Most notably, GLAAD noticed how the two news outlets gave a very different story about the kiss-in protest.

While other news outlets reported around 100 protestors, the church-owned outlets cut the number down to 60 or "dozens". GLAAD notes that this is just another blemish for the Deseret News, which was charged with "dereliction of journalistic duty" by the Columbia Journalism Review for its Proposition 8 coverage.

The Salt Lake Tribune

As a fan of original documents, cheers to the Salt Lake Tribune for making the police report available. Considering how I've seen some discussion of the incident include things like "It does not take much research to find out the couple was doing more than just kissing... They were making out and all over each other. (The police reports are public information.)"

It's valuable to be able to look at the report and see that comments like that are a flat-out lie.

KSL-TV

I was warned by GLAAD and I was still surprised by the level of journalism fail that can be found in KSL's coverage. It may be bad when the media tried to look at opposing sides in a story and then lazily fails to fact-check both stories, but KSL barely bothers to consider that there may be a side other than the church's. (Admittedly, it looks like the station's reporting may have improved since then.)

KTVX-TV

I wasn't expecting much in checking out the local news but I was surprised when I saw how ABC affiliate KTVX's Mark Zinni handled the story. In attempting to cover both sides of the controversy, the station talked with Jones and Aune who are even allowed to demonstrate the kind of kiss they say started the incident and stop to include footage of opposite-sex couples being affectionate in the plaza and not facing harassment by security guards like Jones and Aune.