JAAIDS Media Monitoring Service, December 2006

April 5, 2007 :: O'Femi Kolawole,Lagos, Journalists Against AIDS(JAAIDS)Nigeria

HIV/AIDS: Curtailing the epidemic on World AIDS Day

The media coverage of HIV and AIDS in December was
outstanding in a significant regard. A total number of
314 stories were published. It was the highest in the
year. It was unprecedented.

But this could be understandable since December 1 is
marked yearly as the World AIDS Day. The different
activities in the month like awareness seminars,
workshops, rallies, and charity concerts as well as
awards ceremonies on AIDS during the period attracted
much attention and media coverage.

However, the Guardian’s feature report, ‘HIV/AIDS:
Curtailing the epidemic on World AIDS Day’ published
on December 1, took the shine off the others.

Aside giving a global overview of the epidemic, the
story also offered more insight to the readers through
interviews with top players in the national AIDS
response in Nigeria.

 The writer demonstrated a good grasp of
HIV/AIDS-related issues as well as an understanding of
the epidemic’s history in the country. With the
inclusion of people living with HIV through
interviews, as well as the illustration of the report
with good pictures, there was hardly any ground to
fault the report. Guardian proudly acclaims itself as
the flagship of Nigerian Journalism. The report
attests to it.

 The Sun’s report ‘Lime, Lies and HIV/AIDS’ also
attracted attention. The special report was published
on page 24 of its December 23 edition.  

The reporter went in search of commercial sex workers
who use lime in their private parts so as to avoid
contracting HIV. Through interviews with medical
scientists, he was able to prove to the CSWs that they
were more or less making themselves more prone to
infection.

Much as the story is a good piece of journalism which
the readers would find very interesting, informative
and enlightening, the use of adjectives like: ‘HIV
scourge, and ‘deadly disease’, among others, should
have been avoided.

On December 7, New Age published a short story on page
5. “Incorrect HIV Report: Court asks hospital to
tender report” was the title of the story.

The way the first paragraph of the report was written,
a reader may likely get the wrong impression that
chief executive officers of blue-chip companies or
corporations are immuned from getting HIV infection.
That it is only people at the lower rungs of life who
get infected with HIV.  Of course, any one can test
HIV positive.

While this error may not be blamed on the writer since
he obviously reported the proceedings at the court,
his use of language still needs improvement in
reporting issues on HIV and AIDS. It was inappropriate
of him to have written the ‘dreaded HIV virus.’

For instance, apart from the fact that ‘HIV virus’ is
a tautology since it could have simply been written
‘HIV’, the adjective ‘dreaded’ which the reporter used
does not also give the true picture of the epidemic to
the reader. HIV is not a plague to wipe out the human
race. As a matter of fact, AIDS does not kill
overnight. And people with the infection are not to be
dreaded and stigmatized. It is an infection that can
be managed well like any other infection. As an
alternative, the reporter could have written: ‘The
official was alleged to have tested HIV positive’.

In mitigating the impact of HIV/AIDS, every available
resource, both human and capital, irrespective of the
sector, is needed. That’s why the story published in
the metro section of Daily Independent on December 8
is cheery. It was titled ‘How Alake, subjects walked
against HIV/AIDS in Abeokuta’.  The royal monarch was
Oba Adedotun Gbadebo, the paramount ruler of Abeokuta
in Ogun state.

“I want to appeal to our people within and without
Egba nation to extend their hands of fellowship to
those already infected and show them love and
understanding. We also need to protect ourselves from
infection”, the royal monarch who also granted a space
where a VCCT centre could be opened at his palace, was
quoted to have said in the story. The reporter
illustrated the story with a picture of the walk. It
also stood out from other news stories.

As stated earlier, a total of 314 stories were
published in the month. Of these, 213 were news
stories. The remaining 101 reports were opinion
articles, features and editorials among others.

The Nation had the highest with 41 reports followed by
This Day with 34 while Vanguard and Punch had 26
stories each.  On their part, the news magazines
published an average of one report on HIV/AIDS in the
month.

The fact that there were many reports on HIV/AIDS
should have brought strong commendation for the media.
However, since not many of them, especially the
features, could qualify as outstanding, such
commendation can not be given.

But a common trend in most of the papers was the fact
that there were fewer stigmatizing headlines compared
to the previous month. And that is commendable.

 Four newspapers- Business Day, Champion, New Age, and
Tribune published HIV/AIDS-focused editorials in the
month. All were published on December 1.

Business Day’s editorial was titled ‘A call for
accountability in the fight against AIDS’, while
Champion’s was simply headlined ‘World AIDS Day’. New
Age’s editorial was a poser: ‘World AIDS Day: Are they
keeping the promise?’ Tribune’s was titled ‘World AIDS
Day and Accountability’.

One major message was clear in the editorials. It was
the need for government to be more transparent and
accountable over budgetary allocations and donor funds
on HIV/AIDS and adhere to the World AIDS Campaign
theme for the anniversary which is ‘Stop AIDS-Keep the
Promise’.  However, it was surprising that only four
newspapers among those monitored would consider
writing an editorial on such a global epidemic despite
the significance of December 1 as World AIDS Day.

In conclusion, the news stories published were mainly
from events or a reportage of the statement of a
government official involved in the AIDS response.
Good feature stories were not much in the newspapers
monitored. Even the magazines, which were supposed to
be more at home with such well-investigated reports,
did not fare any better. However, it is hoped that the
newspapers would note some of these shortcomings and
aim towards improving their reporting of issues
related to HIV and AIDS in 2007.

The newspapers monitored are:

Business Day, Champion, Daily Independent, Daily
Trust, Financial Standard, Guardian, National Mirror,
New Age, Punch, The Sun, The Nation, This Day,
Vanguard and Tribune.

The magazines monitored are:

The Week, Tell, Insider Weekly, News watch, Encomium,
City People.