The GMA Selection Process

The GLAAD Media Awards recognize and honor media for their fair, accurate and inclusive representations of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community and the issues that affect our lives.  They also fund GLAAD’s work to amplify stories from the LGBTQ community that build support for LGBTQ acceptance.  The GLAAD Media Awards have been held every year since 1990.

Nominee Selection

GLAAD monitors the media in order to identity nominees in 29 competitive English-language categories, and 4 competitive Spanish-language categories.

In addition to year-round media monitoring, GLAAD issues a Call for Entries, encouraging media outlets to submit outstanding work for consideration. GLAAD may nominate a media project even if it is not submitted as part of the Call for Entries.

All media projects with LGBTQ images are evaluated using four criteria:

1)      Fair, Accurate, and Inclusive Representations – Rather than portraying the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community using broad stereotypes, the project deals with the characters or themes in a fair, accurate, and multi-dimensional manner.  Inclusive speaks to the importance of having the diversity of the LGBTQ community represented in our nominees.

2)      Boldness and Originality – The project breaks new ground by exploring LGBTQ subject matter in non-traditional ways, and handles the LGBTQ content in a fresh and original manner.

3)      Impact – The media project dramatically increases the cultural dialogue about LGBTQ issues, or reaches an audience that is not regularly exposed to LGBTQ images and issues. The project has significant cultural impact.

4)      Overall Quality – A project of extremely high quality adds significance to the images and issues portrayed and draws more viewers or readers to the material.  Fair, accurate, and inclusive images may be weakened when they are part of a poor-quality project.

As a non-profit organization that serves as a resource to media content creators to help them tell fair, accurate, and inclusive stories about the LGBTQ community, GLAAD may have consulted on the content of some of the GLAAD Media Award nominees. That consulting relationship does not influence which media projects receive a GLAAD Media Award nomination. Each nominee is judged solely on its merits and how well it fits the judging criteria for the GLAAD Media Awards, which may be found above.

Selection of Award Recipients

GLAAD Media Awards voters contribute to the selection of award recipients in each category via online balloting. Voters are comprised of: GLAAD staff and board, GLAAD donors and volunteers, and selected media industry experts.

Award recipients are announced at the GLAAD Media Awards ceremonies.