Field Note

Overcoming AIDS Stigma and Media Fatigue

By Beatrice M. Spadacini
Communication Officer, the World Bank

The media plays a unique role within society either to denounce or to perpetuate the bias and moral judgments against people with HIV/AIDS.

Sometimes journalists can underestimate how influential their portrayal of HIV/AIDS is in shaping people's attitudes, especially when society fails to distinguish between people and the disease they suffer from; when denial is so pervasive that the infected are ostracized by their families.

In addition, reporters, editors and producers constantly grapple with ways to find fresh angles to discuss HIV, and ensure their viewers and readers remain engaged by a topic that never appears to grow old.

To address these and other key topics concerning the media and its treatment of HIV/AIDS, the World Bank organized a distance-learning course from June to November 2002 that simultaneously brought together journalists and HIV/AIDS project managers from Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Nigeria and Malawi.

The course, entitled Fighting the HIV/AIDS Pandemic through Information and Strategic Communication, recognizes the role that successful communication campaigns can play in increasing understanding of the disease and promoting life-saving behaviors. Each program stream consisted of eight video-conferenced modules, which were followed up through in-country work.

"Our intent in offering this course was to put developing countries in the drivers' seats when designing strategies to reduce stigma and discrimination and to link local responses to international efforts," said Caby Verzosa, who heads the Knowledge and Capacity Building Unit of the Development Communications Division at the World Bank.

By inviting project managers and journalists to work together, the World Bank team encouraged participants to actively explore how discrimination is often unconsciously expressed and perpetuated. Guest lecturers, such as Antoine Schneider of the Change Project, contributed to the video-conferenced series by raising issues such as the power of language and how HIV-positive individuals are labeled.

Mr. Schneider explained that terms such as "walking corpse" and "the soon-to-be-late Mr. Jones," which are casually used in newspaper articles, op-ed pieces and everyday conversation, tangibly affect how people respond to AIDS, and are particularly relevant for journalists who may not always be cognizant about the impact of their words.

"The course really changed the way I report, because of the hard facts I [learned] about AIDS," noted Zambian journalist Mwiika Malindima. "As reporters we have a role to play in reducing stigma. We can change the way we package information to make it more representative of the reality we want to capture."

Because the nature of the news business is to constantly report on something "new," AIDS-related stories are often victims of malaise. Consequently, they are either intentionally neglected in newsrooms or episodic, making headlines only when powerful people reveal their statuses or when UNAIDS releases its annual report.

"Many HIV/AIDS stories focus on who has AIDS and how many people are dying of the disease, rather than exploring in-depth how people contract AIDS and the kinds of behaviors needed to prevent it," explains Tim Carrington of the World Bank Institute. One of the goals of the distance learning course, adds Carrington, is to explore ways to keep the AIDS story "fresh, multi-dimensional and alive in the psyche of people," with methods such as narrating the story from different angles, and not just treating it as a medical topic.

"I used to view the pandemic strictly as a health issue, but the course has changed all that," said Lillian Okenwa, a reporter for the Nigerian daily Thisday. "Now I know that AIDS is a development issue. My articles are geared towards getting my audience to...appreciate that no society serious about development can attain it when AIDS is ignored or downplayed."

Fostering the interaction between journalists and HIV/AIDS project managers was an intentional objective of the course, bridging the professional gap that often fuels myths, suspicion and inaccurate reporting. Despite a frequent complaint among project managers that AIDS receives insufficient media coverage or is simply sensationalized, journalists claim that they are doing the best they can, given their difficulty in accessing information.

"Getting the least amount of information in Nigeria is a Herculean task, even more so when this is related to AIDS," said Okenwa, adding that people working on AIDS in non-governmental organizations are not always helpful in sharing what they know, or that the data journalists receive is simply too technical.

Indeed, access to accurate, timely and newsworthy information causes frustration among many African journalists who resent being blamed for unsuccessful awareness campaigns or being used as conduits of messages they were never involved in producing. A recent survey conducted by the Cameroon National AIDS Commission among 27 local journalists from both private and public media outlets highlighted their irritation in being constantly perceived as caisse de resonance -- loudspeakers in the execution of communication campaigns.

The survey in Cameroon showed that journalists do not necessarily agree about their role in the fight against HIV/AIDS. While some strongly favor elevating AIDS as an emergency topic that ought to be given particular attention in all newsrooms, others argue they are not PR professionals and try not to take on a specific role.

Given the World Bank's unique position as an international financial and policy institution that deals directly with governments, the course emphasized the role of the media in promoting good governance and questioning public policy effectiveness on the reduction of HIV transmission rates and the provision of care and treatment to the infected.

Now that the World Bank and the Global Fund are increasing their financial contributions to National AIDS Commissions across Africa, journalists must hold their governments accountable: if political commitment was yesterday's goal, monitoring how the money is being spent is today's priority.

Although the World Bank course has only been offered in five sub-Saharan African countries, plans are underway to extend it to other African nations. This spring, a revised version of the course will be offered in South Asia. For more information, please contact: cverzosa@worldbank.org or tcarrington@worldbank.org