AIDS voices least heard - study

The voices and gender dimensions of HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa are not well reflected by the media, according to a study released on Wednesday, World Press Freedom Day. For a month during 2005, the 'HIV and AIDS and Gender Baseline Study' by Gender Links and the Media Monitoring Project (MMP) covered 118 media houses and monitored 37,000 news items in 11 Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries. MMP director William Bird, who presented the findings in Johannesburg, South Africa, told PlusNews that only three percent of all items actually focused on or mentioned the epidemic. "At 19 percent, Lesotho had the highest percentage of related coverage, while Mauritius had the lowest with just one percent," he noted. However, the low level of attention by media houses in South Africa was of particular concern, with only two percent given to AIDS. Bird said, "It is shocking, especially in view of the current scale of the pandemic here [over 13 percent of South Africans are HIV positive], that sports and politics still gets more coverage." He estimated that in South Africa sports were allocated 20 percent to 25 percent of reporting space, while politics occupied between 15 percent and 20 percent. "Ironically though, all aspects of society are in some way or the other affected by this disease." Governments, international donors and civil society organisations like the South African AIDS lobby group, Treatment Action Campaign, received the lion's share of media attention. "People living with HIV/AIDS constituted only four percent of all journalists' sources, while government officials and officials from international organisations formed 42 percent in South Africa," Bird confirmed. A high point of the study, however, was that media language and style had improved over the years to include fewer blatant stereotypes and showed increased sensitivity, and feature stories about AIDS were higher at 10 percent than general coverage, which stood at five percent. According to the study - considered to be the most extensive research of its kind ever to be undertaken in the SADC region - a South African weekly newspaper, the Mail and Guardian, had the most AIDS news items, while the South African Afrikaans-language Sunday newspaper, Rapport, had the lowest. Among daily newspapers, South Africa's The Sowetan published the most items on the issue. Sowetan editor Thabo Leshilo admitted that AIDS was still a difficult subject to sell. "Regardless of the gravity of the pandemic, it is a reality that most readers will switch off when presented with a front page item on AIDS. Our readership [around 1.2 million] once dropped by 16,000 as a result of running with a lead story on AIDS," Leshilo told PlusNews. "While sports, celebrity gossip and politics might make for top sellers, we [the media] need to come up with innovative ways of giving HIV/AIDS the attention it deserves," he said. "After all, we are also educators of the public." Gender Links and the Media Monitoring Project hope to encourage at least 80 percent of the region's newsrooms to attend workshops on improving HIV/AIDS reporting. Access the study here: www.genderlinks.org.za