Reporting on HIV/AIDS in Africa: A Manual
Finding New Angles for Reporting on HIV/AIDS

There are many ways to be creative, prepare fresh stories, and give more media attention to HIV/AIDS. Here we provide a few ideas for original ways to cover HIV/AIDS. Many of these are based on the suggestions and experiences that journalists have shared in various forums.

Investigative Journalism and HIV/AIDS

Investigative reporting goes far beyond the typical news story or feature, and it is an area where journalists can make a significant difference in the epidemic. As one frequent reporter on HIV/AIDS put it, "reporters need to be the watchdogs of the public interest." One area where there is a great need for journalists to investigate the issues in depth, she points out, involves "following the money" that foundations, donor agencies, and national governments are committing, in sizable proportions, to fighting HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Angles to investigate include:

• Are the funds getting to the people they are supposed to benefit?
• Are the funds being used effectively?
• Are the funds being used efficiently?

Another area that presents an extraordinary opportunity for investigative journalism involves the goals that governments have set for themselves for combating HIV/AIDS. For example, at the United Nations General Assembly's Special Session on HIV/AIDS in June 2001, 189 member countries approved a Declaration of Commitment. Governments also set goals and timetables for themselves in regional forums and as part of national policy-making processes to fight HIV/AIDS.

Journalists might investigate:

• Are governments implementing their plans?
• Are they implementing their plans on schedule?
• Are countries and communities achieving their objectives? What evidence is there?
• Who benefits from the plan?

One journalist took several governments to task at once in a story released in Sénégal by the Pan African News Agency:

"It has now been established that Africa is the continent with the greatest number of people with HIV/AIDS… . The press generally echoes this almost every day… .

"But the fact that African governments are quickest to block or condemn AIDS research rather than to block the spread [of HIV/AIDS] is fairly revealing of the multidimensional character of the war that is taking shape against the disease…whether Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, Togo, Malawi or Nigeria, governments are proving to be very strict with anyone who 'pretends' to have discovered a cure or prophylaxis, thus provoking debates that are as sterile as they are long and that often go beyond medical circles.

"The real danger right now is that while the debates grow, the inestimable prevention work done by NGOs and large organizations like UNAIDS runs the risk of being reduced to nothing."

The journalist subsequently cites a number of reliable sources and shows the different sides of the challenges surrounding treatments and prevention of HIV/AIDS, thus laying out new possibilities for governments to change their focus to address the challenges more effectively.

Indigenous Journalism

There are a few journalists who have built a great reputation and secured a large following by deftly using a combination of orthodox journalism skills and story-telling techniques and language that are indigenous to their communities or countries. One of these journalists had a regular column in an English-language newspaper in Swaziland. He wrote about politics and other issues in the news using a mixture of local dialect and English, in the style of an amusing storyteller. When he died prematurely, the whole nation grieved; he had achieved the status of national hero. There are other examples of this kind of indigenous journalism, but there are no written rules and guidelines for it. Yet, when done skillfully and creatively, and honoring both the culture in which it is used and the core values of journalism, it can be very successful.

Women and HIV/AIDS

Perhaps the biggest story of HIV/AIDS in Africa today is the feminization of the epidemic; more women than men have HIV/AIDS in Africa. Women are also becoming infected at a faster rate than are men. The reasons are many. In very general terms, they stem from women's physiological vulnerability to HIV infection, and to gender disparities. Gender inequalities mean that women are less educated and poorer than men, their decision-making and negotiating power is diminished, and they are particularly susceptible to sexual violence and other harmful practices. These same gender disparities are also harmful for men in spite of the fact that they tend to favor men. For example, men are expected to have multiple sexual partners, which increases their risk of contracting (and transmitting) HIV.

Although there has been considerable progress in public health circles about understanding the roles of gender and sexuality in HIV/AIDS, there is still little public awareness and discussion about it. While this is lamentable, it does offer a superb opportunity for journalists to embark on some groundbreaking reporting. Journalists can expose the new face of the epidemic, and explore the many different contributing factors as well as the numerous implications of the feminization of HIV/AIDS.

Story Topic Ideas

Perhaps the most important advice we can offer to journalists is to remember and to understand that HIV/AIDS is not just a health story. HIV/AIDS is also a social, economic, political, and developmental story. Once journalists understand this, they will never run out of HIV/AIDS story ideas. The following story ideas are just a beginning:

• New trends in the HIV/AIDS epidemic:
  • What population groups are being hit the hardest, why, and who is doing what to respond. For example, why more women than men are getting HIV; why young women are several times more likely to get HIV than young men; and the possible solutions.
• Mapping the epidemic:
  • How it is moving from one community to another. For example, how the epidemic is moving along truck routes, between fishing ports, or between mining communities and home.
  • How it is being transmitted.
  • How it could be stopped.
• Gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS:
  • How and why these are linked, and what this linkage means.
  • What changes would be needed to reduce violence and the transmission of HIV/AIDS.
  • Gender-based violence and the criminal justice system.
• Traditional gender roles and relationships and HIV/AIDS:
  • How being a wife puts a woman at risk for HIV/AIDS.
  • How gender affects care for women.
  • How empowering women can prevent HIV/AIDS.
• HIV/AIDS, human rights, and justice:
• Rights of people with HIV/AIDS and the legal protections for people with HIV/AIDS.
• How people with HIV/AIDS are treated and how they should be treated.
• International conventions/plans of action related to human rights, reproductive health, gender equality, children's rights, etc. - and the status of their implementation.
• Adolescents or young adults and their risk for HIV/AIDS.
• The impact of HIV/AIDS on different sectors of the economy:
• For example, its impact on different businesses, industries, agriculture.
• What this impact means for economic and social development.
• Sex work:
• What health services and governments are doing - or could do - to make sex work safer for workers, clients, and their families.
• Programs for sex workers and their clients - what works and what doesn't; examples of empowered sex workers and leaders in the workers' communities.
• Economic conditions and gender disparities that fuel the sex industry.
• Viable economic alternatives to sex work (e.g., micro-credit programs).
• The impact of HIV/AIDS on schools and universities:
• The impact on teachers and students.
• The role of teachers in overcoming the epidemic; examples of what is being done.
• The impact of HIV/AIDS on family structures and relationships.
• HIV/AIDS and children:
• Maternal transmission of HIV and its prevention.
• AIDS orphans - the extent of the problem and the impact on older generations.
• The changing roles of older generations in the face of HIV/AIDS.
• Strategies to care for AIDS orphans and others affected by HIV/AIDS.
• The response of the religious community to HIV/AIDS.
• Treatment and care of people with HIV/AIDS:
• AIDS therapies/medicines.
• Government policy.
• Costs, challenges surrounding AIDS therapies.
• Research into an HIV/AIDS vaccine and microbicide.

KEEPING TABS ON MEDIA COVERAGE Exercise: Develop an archive of media coverage on HIV/AIDS to keep tables of stories that have been done, and on all those that have yet to be covered. Cross-reference the stories that haven't been covered with those that interest your audience to create a potential story list.

Sensationalism

It is probably clear by now that sensationalist coverage of HIV/AIDS is damaging and unnecessary. Not only does it impede efforts to prevent HIV/AIDS and to care for people affected by HIV/AIDS, it also does little to earn professional respect for the journalist.

• Sensationalism is not necessary to sell a story on HIV/AIDS. Sensationalism is an easy way out for a journalist who does not know how to prepare a piece that can sell based on its merits as a timely, relevant, well-written (or narrated), original story. Rather than sensationalism, what is necessary for a story to sell is the application of the elements of good journalism and a new story idea or angle.
• Report the facts, but don't just dwell on the negative. Report on the possibilities, on successful interventions. Morbid and sensational language (for example, a headline like "Sex Thrills and AIDS Kills") in the long term drives away audiences, according to any number of editors.³¹ It leads to fears and prejudices and feelings of hopelessness, which fuel the spread of HIV/AIDS and make life for those with HIV/AIDS (and people close to them) especially difficult and painful.
• To write accurately and dispassionately about HIV/AIDS and related issues, such as sexual violence, the journalist needs to understand the nature of the problem.
• Remember that HIV/AIDS and its contexts are not entertainment.

Using other outlets to get the word out

Good stories can have more than one use, and experience has shown that there is a great demand for compilations of media articles (and transcripts of broadcasts) on a specific issue. For example, booklets of reprinted articles from a group of journalists reporting on different aspects of an issue can be widely disseminated and can ensure that the articles have a longer "shelf-life."