IAS coverage: The good, the bad & the boring
Kim Johnson
27 July 2012
Coverage coming out of the 2012 International AIDS Summit has been a bit of good, a bit of bad and a bit of boring.
Although the South African media certainly hasn’t allowed readers to miss out this week with its coverage of the landmark international event, coverage has been uneven.
Reports in the Daily Sun and The New Age (TNA) which appeared on Wednesday (25 July 2012) were a good example of the chalk and cheese of the IAS news offerings.
The tabloid featured a half page piece that included a handy infographic that gave readers the run-down on the HIV epidemic in different parts of the globe. This was accompanied by a succinct but informative report focussing on the need to eliminate HIV-related stigma and discrimination, especially among vulnerable groups.
TNA on the other hand chose to simply copy-paste Kgalema Motlanthe’s titanic IAS speech, which was guaranteed to have people paging rather than engaging.
The Star kicked off its IAS coverage with a large and eye-catching article by Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. And like the Daily Sun article, Pillay points out that while we have made strides in addressing HIV through medical and scientific means, we should not neglect the human rights aspects linked to the epidemic.
The Star’s second round of IAS coverage was less spectacular, with the paper apparently struggling to get its news priorities straight.
The paper dedicated as much space (read: importance) to an article on risky sexual practices among teens in the US as it did to a local and far more relevant report on the 2012 National HIV Communication Survey (NCS).
While the news of an increase in risky sex practices among US teens is ‘nice to know’, the news that South Africans are practicing safer sex, testing more frequently, and that negative perceptions around those living with HIV are changing should be firmly in the ‘need to know’ category.
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