AFRO-NETS> Where Is AIDS Among The A-List Topics?

[Cecilia Snyder <csnyder@ccmc.org>]

Where Is AIDS Among The A-List Topics?
--------------------------------------

ARTICLE FOUND AT:
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/missing.shtml

By Danny Schechter, executive editor of MediaChannel.org

Think about what happened the other day. Enron hearings opened to a 
Standing Room Only crowd on Capitol Hill. The sleaze was about to 
start gushing out and then, the TV picture shrinks and another story 
interrupts. Breaking News displaces Breaking News. The car carrying 
John Walker Lindh, also known as "Taliban John Walker," "Jihad 
Johnny" or simply, in New York Postese, "The Rat," approaches the 
courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia. Let's Go Live. There's nothing to 
really see, but how can we skip it? ANYTHING might happen! You can 
almost hear the mutterings of accountants from Arthur Anderson who 
had allegedly cooked Enron's books saying as the media scrutiny 
shifts away, "Thank you, there is a God," when their testimony was 
pre-empted for the LATEST. 

When two stories collide, one gives way until the networks realize 
they can split the screen more and more, so you can glimpse all the 
big stories at the same time, the better to distract us and limit our 
attention spans. Increasingly, front page attention is stuck on sto-
ries starting with A: Arms. Al-Qaeda. Ashcroft. Annan. Arafat. Arthur 
Anderson. Anthrax. Afghanistan. But one A is, for the most part, 
missing: AIDS. That omission says a lot about the state of the world 
and the world of news. 

Ted Koppel Rediscovers Africa 

In mid-January, just to show that another A (Africa) could be cov-
ered, Nightline's Ted Koppel highlighted stories that had been swal-
lowed up by yet another A: amnesia (i.e., the tendency by news or-
ganizations to forget that Africa exists). For five nights, he showed 
that a forgotten corner of the world could be covered on television, 
and covered well. I didn't always like the analytical overlay, espe-
cially on a moving profile of a desperately poor woman in the Congo 
that cited Greek mythology to compare her to Sisyphus forever pushing 
a rock up a hill, with a strong subtext of "the poor shall always be 
with us" fatalism. But at a time when most of the developing world 
goes uncovered on TV, it was an impressive demonstration of caring 
and daring. 

But what if you feel that the African AIDS story needs to be told but 
in a different way, through the eyes and voices of African youth - 
the group that is most at risk? Notes UNAIDS, the organization lead-
ing the global fight: "Children and young people are at the center of 
the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The extent to which their rights are pro-
tected, the services and information they receive and the behavior of 
young people can help determine the quality of life of millions of 
people. Young people are particularly susceptible to HIV infection 
and they also carry the burden of caring for family members living 
with HIV/AIDS." 

According to the UN, AIDS has killed 25 million people since the 
early 1980s, and as many as 8,000 die every day around the globe. 
Fully 40 million are infected, and an estimated 14,000 people are 
added to that number every day. Yet as AIDS claims more victims it 
gets less coverage. On January 25, The New York Times carried a 
Reuters story reporting that "AIDS will surpass the Black Death as 
the world's worst pandemic if the 40 million people living with 
HIV/AIDS do not get life-prolonging drugs, a public health physician 
said Friday." 

OneWorld's new on-line AIDS Channel (www.aidschannel.org) notes that 
many of the promised contributions to a global AIDS fund have not 
come through. Writing from Zambia, in the epicenter of the epidemic, 
Catherine Ndashe Phiri, the AIDS channel's editor, writes that the 
war on terrorism "slowed the renewed commitment from the June UNGASS 
on AIDS [UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/AIDS] for the end 
of global AIDS... AIDS was once again put on the backbench, and un-
doubtedly it will be felt largely by Africa and other developing na-
tions." 

When AIDS isn't visible in the media, it doesn't exist for communi-
ties that rely on media to tell them what matters most. This is true 
not only in the West, but in Africa itself, where stigma and dis-
crimination against AIDS sufferers is deeply entrenched, and where 
silence and denial still drive many governments to cover up their 
frightening infection levels. Often the young people who most need to 
know how to protect themselves have few programs directed their way. 
At the same time, there are many stirring and effective responses led 
by unsung young heroes whose stories could inspire a greater youth 
mobilization. 

But who is going to tell these stories? 

Speak Up Young Africa! 

Two young medical students, Kebba Jobarteh from Gambia and Nduka 
Amankulor from Nigeria, who went to Yale and received public health 
training at Harvard, found that many people in the West took a rather 
paternalistic approach, the mindset of medical missionaries who don't 
really respect or support initiatives underway in Africa at the com-
munity level. "We looked around and realized that most of our col-
leagues knew very little about our world, customs and concerns. They 
couldn't really speak to African youth, or for that matter, encourage 
young people to speak for themselves," Kebba told me when he ap-
proached Globalvision to help fashion a media project with a film, 
web component and youth network to showcase what Africans themselves 
are doing about AIDS. 

"We are calling it "Speak Up Young Africa," adds Nduka, "because we 
know how ineffective most anti-AIDS programming is because it talks 
down to young people in boring and uninspired ways." With a small re-
search grant, these passionate doctors-to-be jumped in with both 
feet. They spent two months crisscrossing the continent talking with 
youth groups, medical colleagues and extraordinary individuals whose 
stories can become components of the film they insist needs to be 
made. 

"There is nothing out there like what we want to do--media with youth 
for youth," Kebba insists. "Who better to help tell this story than 
us? We know the medical dimension, understand the cultural challenges 
and relate quite personally to what African youth are going through 
because that's who we are." 

Funds Needed For Anti-AIDS Media

Now their big challenge begins - to find the resources to produce the 
project. They have an advisory board that reads like a Who's Who of 
AIDS experts. And they have going for them at least six C's: cha-
risma, consciousness, contacts, competence, commitment and caring. 
Only one C is still a bit light: cash. 

A lot of money earmarked to fight AIDS in Africa is sloshing around 
the world. Much of it is spent on research institutes in the North, 
on conferences and meetings of experts. Some of it is ripped off by 
corrupt governments or ends up in the coffers of wealthy pharmaceuti-
cal companies. Talk to people in the field and they will you about 
waste and misplaced priorities. Travel to infected communities and 
you hear complaints not just about the lack of access to vital high-
priced medicines but about the unavailability of basic care, even as-
pirins. 

Precious little is being invested in media projects that can inform 
young people in a language they can relate to, produced by people who 
connect with their pain and aspirations. Already "Speak Up Young Af-
rica" has been spoken down to by some TV outlets and funding agen-
cies. A few cop out by saying "Not for us" or "We don't fund media." 
But they didn't ignore September 11, and they must not be allowed to 
ignore AIDS. 

"Speak Up Young Africa" will get made somehow. I am going to help 
these multilingual, multitalented young men with the smarts to sur-
vive in two very different cultures, and I am sure others will too. I 
am sure there are funders who will get its significance and poten-
tial. If you can help - with money, with contacts, with ideas - con-
tact Kebba and Nduka at mailto:kebba.jobarteh@yale.edu. 

A project like theirs is vital, given the basic indifference of many 
media gatekeepers who keep Americans underinformed about Africa and 
AIDS. This is not a conspiracy by the news business, by the way, just 
a reflection of its market-driven culture and often parochial focus. 
That needs to be challenged both with documentation of the gaps and 
criticism of errors and omissions on the one hand, and with engaged 
independent media on the other. 

Ted Koppel titled his last report from the Congo "Heart of Darkness." 
But as has been said before, the only thing dark about Africa is our 
ignorance of it. We all need to open our hearts to let the ignorance 
out and pump the light of empathy and compassion in. 

--
Danny Schechter is executive editor of MediaChannel.org
mailto:dissector@mediachannel.org 
http://www.mediachannel.org/ 

--
Cecilia Snyder 
Senior Project Associate - CCMC 
http://www.PLANetWIRE.org 
Communications Consortium Media Center 
1200 New York Ave NW Suite 300 
Washington DC 20005-1754, USA
Tel: +1-202-326-8711 
Fax: +1-202-682-2154 
mailto:csnyder@ccmc.org 
http://www.ccmc.org 

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