Objectivity a case study: Gay Surrogacy
Lee
Lee Mathews and his son Alexander, who was born to a surrogate mother, became media darlings after Mathews told his story to Melbourne gay newspaper, Melbourne Star Observer. Mathews agreed to tell his story because he was disturbed by Howard’s comments on gay marriage. The story was picked up by The Age and the SMH and led to a segment on SBS Insight and further media coverage.
Looking at the story, which appeared on page three of the weekend Herald with a beautiful page dominant image of a delighted, happy, father and son, it is tempting to hail this as a breakthrough story. And in some ways it is. But in other ways it is a site of tremendous contestation.
The story begins with some introductory set-up, quotes from a lesbian doctor and a lawyer who have helped set up surrogacy arrangements for gay parents. Both sources are used only to establish the extent and process of gay men becoming fathers. The report then develops with a few paragraphs about Mathews but no direct quotes. Then we suddenly segue into the “strong concerns” of the Australian Family Association.
“Some people have said it's a form of child abuse to bring a child deliberately into the world without a mother and father,” said spokesman Bill Muehlenberg. “Every child has a right to its own mother and father, not two dads, not two mothers and not a committee.”
Mr Muehlenberg said he feared for the future of Mr Matthews's child.
“We wouldn't deliberately bring a child into this world and deliberately lop of its arms and its legs, which is what we are doing with these kind of arrangements.”
A spokesman for the Catholic Church, Monsignor Les Tomlinson, was also critical. “Such ways of procuring offspring is stepping outside the natural order,” he said.
Depriving a child of a mother and father, he said, could “impair the psychological and emotional growth” of a child and contribute to later dysfunction. (16/08/03)
Then the article moves back to a summary of current Australian legal issues concerning surrogacy. After a comment that Matthews went public “with his family’s story after the Prime Minister John Howard ruled out marriage for homosexuals,” the report ends by recapping Howard’s statement.
Muehlenberg and Tomlinson are quoted as part of journalism’s “strategic ritual” of objectivity (Tuchman 1972). And at first it may seem that their quotes do add balance, but they are in fact only answering back their own concerns. The other voices in the article are asked to comment on the process of surrogacy while Muehlenberg and Tomlinson are invited to comment on the morality of the arrangement and the welfare of the child.
The authority of Muehlenberg and Tomlinson as experts in this matter must also be questioned. If the concern was really about child welfare then surely a paediatrician or child psychologist would have been a better choice to achieve a strategic balance.
But this story is not really about the rights of the child it is about a contentious social debate. The journalist has chosen to stay within “the established terms of the problematic in play” (Hall 1982:81) with reference to moral and religious authorities rather than treat this as an emerging new story of family.
From: O’Donnell, M., 2004, “Going to the chapel media narratives of same sex marriage,” Pacific Journalism Review, 10(1).
