SA media ignores Aids pandemic

New York - HIV infection rates in South Africa are among the highest in the world. UNAids, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, estimates that almost 30 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV. South Africa, widely acknowledged as the country hardest hit by AIDS, is estimated to have more than five million people who are HIV-positive in a population of 45 million - yet media reporting is dismal.

And with recent reports ("South Africa Needs More Graveyards to Bury AIDS Dead", Reuters, 19.05.2004), suggesting that cities are running out of burial space because of the rising AIDS death toll, the overall picture is a bleak one indeed.

However, an analysis of the coverage of AIDS in the South African media reveals that the pandemic is being virtually ignored in the print and broadcast media. A look at how HIV/AIDS was covered on television news in 2002 and 2003 confirms this. And the picture shows no signs of improvement in the first three months of this year - on television news and in print media.

A Media Tenor analysis of 31 204 television news reports on the South African Broadcasting Corporation's English news and the independent etv news in a two-year period reveals that AIDS received only 1.4% of the total coverage. In 2004, the amount of coverage across all forms of media decreased to 1.2%, with 0.6% coverage on television news, 1.3% in daily newspapers and 1.3% in the weeklies. In terms of the coverage of major topics, AIDS received only 0.1% more airtime or column inches than environmental issues - an indication that the media do not see it as the crucial issue that it is.

A full copy of the report is available at www.mediatenor.com.

The media's role in contributing to educational efforts, public awareness, and political consideration of the international AIDS crisis is immeasurable. Media Tenor is dedicated to monitoring the leading international print and broadcast media's AIDS coverage in order to provide a resource for media professionals and others interested in bringing the AIDS crisis to the forefront of global awareness and initiative.

The Media Tenor Institute for Media Analysis is an independent, non-partisan organization. For the past 10 years, Media Tenor has analyzed the leading media worldwide on a daily basis. Media Tenor's research methodology was developed in cooperation with experts from the universities of Berlin, Leipzig, London, New York, Mainz and Munich, as well as other partner institutes. Media Tenor's data accuracy systems have been designed to minimize the possible effect of personal opinion on data, and qualitative conclusions based on a scientific base of quantitative information are internationally recognized for their transparency and reliability.