There is a growing danger that Aids is dropping off the South African media screen, an analysis by Media Tenor, the Institute for Media Analysis in Pretoria, showed.
In terms of coverage of major topics, Aids receives only 0,1% more airtime or column inches than environmental issues, clearly showing that South African media have lost their focus on this issue.
“In Africa the social, economic and political impact of Aids is profound. The media has a crucial role to play in the fight against the disease, but a major concern is that journalists do not have sufficient knowledge about the disease itself and its public policies,” said Media Tenor managing director Wadim Schreiner.
An analysis of 31Â 204 television news reports on the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s English news and the independent e.tv news over a two-year period revealed 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.
“The media should be playing a far greater role in terms of raising public awareness about Aids and covering stories with issues such as prevention and reducing the stigma associated with the disease,” said Gregory Rule, a senior researcher at Media Tenor.
“Editors and journalists should constantly find new, innovative ways of reporting on Aids to ensure that it never becomes ‘old news’,” he said.
The main protagonists the media featured when reporting on Aids this year shows society (32,1% of coverage) and the government (24,3%) as the leading actors. These were followed by foreign society (9,2%), political parties (7,2%) and economy/unions (6,3%).
South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has faced criticism over his government’s slow progress in providing anti-retroviral drugs to those infected with HIV, is ranked seventh on the list with 4,5%.
In terms of the 2002/03 television data, Mbeki ranked fourth on the list of protagonists, showing that in terms of media focus, the attention has shifted from the president to Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
The media’s leading focus in Aids reporting has centred on issues of treatment (36% of all reports in 2004 and 36,2% in 2002/03 television media).
The research for 2004 shows that in terms of treatment, the use of anti-retrovirals (74%) has by far been the leading issue, with nutrition (9%) and the use of traditional medicines (7%) being the other main topics.
This is hardly surprising since the issue of anti-retroviral treatment has dominated the Aids discourse in South Africa in recent years. The health minister has been particularly prominent in the media in this regard.
Prevention was the next most reported-on issue on Aids in 2002/03, with 32,3% of reports addressing this issue.
In 2004, however, issues of prevention made up only 14,8% of the coverage on Aids.
Media Tenor posed the question whether the media have become less interested in stories about prevention.
From the research it seems as though the media’s attention has shifted to the government’s policy on Aids, in particular on the national rollout of anti-retrovirals.
The research shows further that the government and the president have been critically received in the media in terms of Aids policy.
South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV/Aids in the world, with more than one in 10 of the population of 45-million infected.
HIV prevalence among antenatal clinic attendees rose from only 0,7% in 1990 to 4% in 1993 to 17% in 1997 and 26,5% in 2002. — I-Net Bridge