ABSTRACT

Homosexuality represents a less known phenomenon in the Romanian society. Mass-media provides an environment to spread both opinions and Information. In its "hunger" for special events, for exceptions, mass-media releases frequently news especially about special aspects of sexual behaviour, including homosexuality. The way in which this subject is released has a lot of influence upon public opinion, once that the subject is relativei}' new for Romanian society. Present research tries to analyse the way in which "Expres-Magazin" magazine approaches the subject of homosexuality. There were studies articles published between 1990-1995 (275 numbers). In this period were published 34 articles about homosexuality. The analysis follows the journalistic communication on several distinct levels: the surface of article: the type of articlefinformation, opinion polis, letter received from readers, articles on medical issues), the tendencies ofjournalist. For the information articles, we tried to find out if the subjects dealt with a positive event or with a negative one for the actor, and journalist 's attitudes toward the issue(positive, negative, and neutral). The study concludes that the tolerance toward different types of sexual behaviour, as reflected in articles published in "Expres Magazine" magazine is quite low.

KEYWORDS: homosexuality, press, expres-magazin.