Description
The media tend to sensationalize AIDS, often focusing
on the more scandalous aspects of the private lives
of those with the disease, without shedding light
on the complexity of the contagion. Often, those with HIV/AIDS are portrayed as the culprits behind the spread of the disease, thus contributing to the social ostracism that infected people suffer. Sometimes, reporters even get it wrong, propagating wrong notions about the disease and contributing to the public's misinformation about HIV/AIDS.
Even when journalists get it right, they have tended to look at the epidemic in a one-dimensional way: as a public health problem, or as an issue related to the sex industry, drug use or military prostitution. AIDS is all of these, but also more than all of these. To succeed in the battle against AIDS, the epidemic must be viewed in a multidimensional way, as a phenomenon rooted in society and tightly linked to social ills.
