HIV/Aids in Southern Africa is under-reported, the voices of those most affected are least heard and the gender dimensions of the pandemic are not well reflected.
This is according to a study released by the Media Monitoring Project and Gender Links in Johannesburg on Wednesday — which is also World Press Freedom Day — at a launch of the HIV/Aids and Gender Baseline Study and Media Resource Desk.
Director of the Media Monitoring Project William Bird presented the findings of the study, which was conducted on 118 media houses in 11 Southern African Development Community countries over a month in 2005.
He said only 2% of news items in South Africa mentioned or focused on HIV/Aids.
”Lesotho had the highest percentage of HIV/Aids stories with 19% and Mauritius had the lowest with just 1%,” said Bird.
The study, which forms part of the Media Action Plan on HIV/Aids and gender that is led by the Southern African Editors Forum, monitored 37 001 news items.
It found that only 3% of all the items mentioned or focused on the pandemic.
South Africa only had 2% coverage on HIV/Aids issues, although the country had an estimated number of over 5-million people who live with the virus.
”People living with HIV (PLHIV) constituted only 4% of all journalists’ sources while government officials and officials from international organisations formed 42%,” said Bird.
PLHIV were mostly used as sources in Swaziland (10%) and no PLHIV were used as sources at all in Malawi. Men’s voices dominated in all topics of coverage as sources, except for care, while only 39% of women were used as sources.
Forty percent of the little media coverage on the pandemic was centred on prevention, mother-to-child transmission and sexual power relations. Care and support received 16% of total coverage.
”Within this category, orphans and vulnerable children received the greatest attention and home-based care received only minimal attention,” said Bird.
In the area of treatment, the media focused mostly on ARVs (30%) and the medical aspects of Aids (27%), with positive living, the role of nutrition and where to get help receiving very little coverage.
”On the positive side, there have been a number of improvements in media reporting. These include fewer blatant stereotypes and increased sensitivity to language,” he said.
Feature stories on HIV and Aids are higher, with 10% than, general coverage (5%). A high number of stories are original stories produced or added to by newsroom journalists.
The research showed that in Southern Africa there are more women journalists reporting on HIV (45%) than in most other beats and in most instances women journalists were more likely to access female sources.
In South Africa the Mail $ Guardian had the most news items on HIV/Aids and Rapport had the lowest. In daily newspapers the Sowetan newspaper published most items on HIV/Aids issues.
Executive director of Gender Links Colleen Morna said an audience study showed that people, especially women, were ”crying” for more coverage on HIV/Aids. ”Our aim is to reach at least 80% of the newsrooms and conduct workshops in media houses to improve the level of reporting on the issue,” said Morna.
Chriselda Kananda of Metro FM said the media caused further confusion by not implementing corrective measures on their news items.
”The media should stop perpetuating the notion that HIV means death. Information about healthy lifestyles and positive living are just as important as that about ARVs,” said Kananda. — Sapa