Homophobia in the media: now TV ad for Virgin Mobile is investigated

A high-profile television advert is under investigation after complaints suggesting it was homophobic and had resorted to stereotyping gays.

The commercial, for Virgin Mobile, features the musician Wyclef Jean. He is shown naked in communal showers in a jail in the "deep south" of the United States, looking alarmed about the prospect of picking up a bar of soap from the floor.

Last week, the Independent Television Commission suspended a commercial for the internet company Yahoo! after 15 people complained that its depiction of a naked man being preyed on by a raincoat-clad figure was homophobic. The company denied the accusation.

The complaints coincide with Stonewall, the gay rights pressure group, condemning right-wing newspapers for having a "bizarre fascination" with homosexuality, which far outstrips the interests of the public. Reacting to "weeks of homophobic coverage", the charity derided the editors of papers, such the Daily Mail, for being "out of touch" with their readers.

Stonewall's attack followed last week's announcement by the Crown Prosecution Service that it was to adopt a "zero tolerance" policy towards homophobic crime.

Sacha Deshmukh, Stonewall's director of parliamentary affairs, warned that he would be keeping "a very close eye" on the tone of newspaper stories to decide if there were grounds for taking some papers to the Press Complaints Commission. Focusing on the flurry of homophobic articles in the wake of the gay rape allegations stemming from the collapse of the Paul Burrell trial and a new law to give gay couples adoption rights, Mr Deshmukh said: "Over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of that. There's a bizarre fascination with homosexuality [in some of the papers] that must be way above what their readers are interested in. I think they would be surprised if they spoke to their readers about what they thought about it.

"We are keeping a very, very close eye on things. If it gets out of hand we will speak to the relevant authorities."

His remarks come a week after a number of prominent gay figures, including Graham Norton, and the Labour MEP Michael Cashman, told The Independent on Sunday that the creeping culture of media homophobia was "vile".

The current of gay stereotyping in the media was again apparent last week. On Tuesday, the Mail carried a story mocking the Government for its decision to "write out" the word homosexual from its vocabulary in favour of the term "orientation towards people of the same sex". The piece went on to list, in gratuitous detail, pejorative terms such as "queer", "pansy" and "faggot", on the pretext of describing their origins.

But "homophobic" items are not confined to right-wing papers. The Daily Mirror ran a competition in its Scurra diary section asking readers to complete the sentence: "Gareth Gates shared a cubicle with a male friend at Home House, in Portman Square, at midnight on Monday because ..." The winning entry was: "The November meeting of the Barrymore fan club didn't need a larger venue."

'The Independent on Sunday' today launches an occasional column to keep watch on homophobic comments in the media. The worst exponents of homophobia will be named and shamed. If you spot something you think is homophobic, please email: sundaynews@ independent.co.uk