Since 1981, when the AIDS epidemic first became a crisis, the media has covered this terminal disease, but now the question has risen as to whether or not the media has covered it enough, according to the panelists at AU's recent American Forum. Although the numbers of deaths caused by AIDS, which is a leading cause of death among young people around the world, is increasing, the amount of coverage by the media has decreased significantly.
Today there are an estimated one million people infected with HIV/AIDS in the United States, according to Jennifer Kates.
Every year there are 3 million people who die from AIDS, 5 million more who are infected with AIDS and a total of 40 million who live with AIDS, according to Bertil Lindblad.
The School of Communication, in association with the School of International Service and the American Consortium of EU studies, held an American Forum Tuesday night to discuss the media's role with HIV/AIDS awareness.
The forum, "AIDS: The Media's Vanishing Epidemic," was conducted by several panelists, all involved with HIV/AIDS awareness from the community to global level.
The panelists included Kates, the director of HIV Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, Dr. J. Lawrence Miller, director of the Black Education AIDS Project, Kate Roberts, founder and director of YouthAIDS, Steve Sternberg, a medical writer from USA Today and Lindblad, the deputy director of the New York office of U.N. AIDS.
"There seems to be a perception that the epidemic in the United States is over ... that's far from reality," Kates said.
Panelists agreed that one of the main causes of this perception is that HIV/AIDS, from the media's perspective, simply isn't new news.
Editors and journalists are constantly looking for new, exciting stories to report, Sternberg said. He went on to say that when SARS became a well-known, feared disease, it received countless coverage from media around the world. Yet death counts by SARS never came close to the tolls caused by AIDS. SARS was covered because it was the "new" disease. Ironically, while the media claims it is always looking for new stories, only 5 percent of the stories on cable news are in fact new, Sternberg said.
Another panelist blamed the lack of HIV/AIDS coverage on demographics and said that people want to know about domestic issues that will directly affect them.
When middle-class white Canadians die from SARS, the majority of Americans can relate to the problem, said forum moderator Jackie Judd, an adjunct professor in SOC.
According to Kates, while HIV/AIDS is a nationwide as well as global dilemma, minority groups, mainly African-American and Latino, represent the majority of "new HIV infections, the majority of new AIDS cases, the majority of AIDS death and the majority of people living with AIDS in the United States. "
HIV/AIDS is also the leading cause of death of African American women ages 25 to 34, Kates said.
Roberts said that HIV/AIDS awareness varies globally. While an African young person will know about AIDS because he or she is living with it or near it everyday, an American teen will have less awareness because he is less frequently surrounded by those with HIV/AIDS, she said.
While prevention and education of AIDS are two solutions to providing awareness, Roberts emphasizes that the media is largely responsible for raising HIV/AIDS awareness.
Roberts claims that using "pop culture and the media to deliver upbeat and hopeful messages, using the mediums that young people enjoy such as music, fashion, theater, and using celebrities ... to deliver that positive message in the language that young people relate to," is key to raising awareness in America as well as globally.
Many AIDS foundations have collaborated with companies such as MTV and BET and with stars including Alicia Keys and P. Diddy to raise AIDS awareness among young Americans.
"[AIDS awareness] is a long term process," Roberts said. "[Using pop culture] is a very strong method ... to reach the young people."
Unfortunately, "the media ... hasn't worked as well when it comes to raising awareness, especially among racial/ethnic minorities and specifically among Blacks and Latinos," Miller said.
"As the epidemic ... affects Blacks and Latinos more and more... there is less and less media attention being brought to [HIV/AIDS]," Miller said.
In a survey done by the Black Educational AIDS Project, out of 275 Baltimore citizens, 100 percent claimed that they knew someone that died with AIDS or HIV, were living with someone with HIV, knew someone who was incarcerated or were themselves incarcerated with HIV.
"That's the reality of HIV at a very local level," Miller said. "[This coverage] is not in the media."
According to Miller, nearly 300 Baltimore citizens died from AIDS related complications in 2003 and the "same number of people were murdered, yet we don't hear anything about [the deaths caused by AIDS]."
"The AIDS epidemic is far from over and in fact is a global crisis that requires global action," Lindblad said.
While HIV/AIDS coverage is declining, panelists seemed to disagree that there are no AIDS stories to cover.
"[There are] a cacophony of [HIV/AIDS related stories] out there," Sternberg said.
In order for the media to raise HIV/AIDS awareness, it has to know that its audiences want to hear about it, Sternberg said.
Aside from encouraging students to get involved with AIDS awareness that include visiting websites such as youthAIDS.org, panelists strongly encouraged students to write letters to newspaper editors expressing opinions about HIV/AIDS.
There is "always an eye on demographics ... people want to hear about themselves," Judd said.
Panelists strongly agreed that if people make it known to the media that HIV/AIDS deserves more coverage, the media will help increase HIV/AIDS awareness.
