While considerable progress has been made with respect to the depiction of gays and lesbians in television and movies, critics argue that news media still systematically ignore and distort the lives and experiences of gays and lesbians.

In a 1998 study that analyzed 50 years of coverage of gay and lesbian issues in Time and Newsweek, Lisa Bennett found that news media reinforce prejudice and discrimination against gays and lesbians. She observes that gays and lesbians are often linked to deviant or criminal behaviour without evidence to support such claims; and that the media often reprint offensive and homophobic comments. Bennett concludes that such practices reinforce assumptions that gays and lesbians are inherently inferior.

Before the dawn of the gay rights movement in the 1970s, gays and lesbians did not figure prominently in mainstream news media. But with the emergence of HIV/AIDS as a public health issue in the 1980s, coverage became more intense, and more negative. During this time, media coverage often portrayed gay men as a serious risk to society.

Activists and academics such as Simon Watney, Douglas Crimp and Jan Zita Grover argue that news coverage of HIV/AIDS has consistently drawn on negative stereotypes about gays and lesbians. In their view, the coverage of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s reflected mainstream society’s fear of and dislike for the gay community—and essentially blamed gay men for AIDS.

The media coverage of HIV/AIDS improved in the 1990s, largely as a result of the efforts of activists fighting for gay and lesbian rights. But the mainstream media still tend to cover the gay community only when it is perceived to be in crisis. Many argue that, since gays and lesbians comprise approximately two to five per cent of the population, their interests and perspectives should be more readily addressed.

Organizations such as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) maintain that print, news and entertainment media do not adequately address or reflect gay experiences and perspectives. Gays and lesbians tend to appear in the news or on television only when there is a specific issue that interests or directly affects the gay community.

Participants at a 2000 Roundtable of Gays and Lesbians in Quebec came to the same conclusion, saying in their report that the lack of gay news items and the reduction of questions touching the gay and lesbian communities renders the presence of homosexuals in the news "occasional and marginal."

According to an article by Benoît Migneault in a 2001 issue of the National Library of Quebec’s monthly publication À rayons ouverts, there has, in fact, been a great improvement in the coverage of gay issues in Quebec. La Presse, one of Montreal’s most-read dailies, is now publishing more than 400 articles a year on gay themes—up from about fifteen a year in the eighties.

Furthermore, Migneault feels the tone of the writing is now more objective and more sympathetic. Migneault says that media coverage of homosexuality contributed, in former years, to the build-up of prejudice against gays and lesbians, and that it is now working against these biases. And he feels that the gay community press itself has contributed to a changing attitude over the last 20 years.