The social environment plays a pivotal role in shaping current attitudes and behaviors, exerting a lifelong impact on individuals. In addition to parental and peer education, mass media serve as a pervasive cultural framework for understanding gender roles.

News media, in particular, are not mere conduits of information or neutral facts. They reflect the mindsets and attitudes of certain societal groups, including news reporters themselves. Media possess the power to perpetuate or reshape structural oppression based on race, gender, and sexuality, as well as their intersectional relationships.

Regrettably, a lack of sensitivity towards LGBTIQ+ individuals is often prevalent among journalists, resulting in news media representations that starkly contrast with how the majority in society are portrayed.

News reports can be judgmental, intentionally linking diverse genders and sexual orientations to negative personal characteristics or social phenomena, thereby creating the false impression that LGBTIQ+ individuals are unstable, mentally disturbed, or outright dangerous.

Numerous studies have shown that degrading representations of LGBTIQ+ individuals in the media can generate various forms of overt and hidden violence.

The sexual division of labor is observable in the assignment of presenters or talk-show hosts to specific topics. For instance, men often present economic and financial topics, while women tend to be assigned people-focused topics.

Language usage also plays a pivotal role in reinforcing social inequalities generated by the patriarchal system. Linguistic sexism occurs when discriminatory messages are delivered based on the form of the message, such as the words chosen or their arrangement. Social sexism, on the other hand, stems from discriminatory substance within the message. Sexist language manifests in various ways:

• Abuse of the generic masculine,
• Use of gendered terms,
• Feminization of professions,
• Androcentrism and semantic leaps,
• Apparent dualities and loaded words,
• Asymmetrical treatment of the sexes.

While there are measures to mitigate these situations, such as inclusive language, they are often overlooked by communication strategies and policies as they are not legally mandated in most policy contexts.