UK report highlights role of media and African communities to combat HIV-related stigma

A new report launched last week highlights the role of both the UK media and African communities in the UK to combat stigma around HIV and AIDS. The report, Start the Press – from the African HIV Policy Network (AHPN) and Panos London – found that the UK media primarily focuses on HIV as an African disease but does little to challenge myths about African migrants or the underlying factors that lead to Africans being especially vulnerable to HIV. It suggests that journalists and African community advocates should be engaging more with each other.

Last year, a study found that although African people account for the greatest number of new HIV diagnoses in the UK, many Africans are failing to come forward for testing or to access health services due to stigma and discrimination. Although this stigma and discrimination can come from within vulnerable communities themselves, it can also be exacerbated by mainstream and ethnic press coverage.

For this report, researchers from APHN and Panos London analysed HIV coverage in five daily national papers (the Guardian,the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Sun; and four weekly and one bi-weekly ethnic papers targeted at African communities (The Trumpet, The Voice, The African Echo, The Zimbabwean and The New Nation) between November 2005 and December 2006.

Their findings, note the report, are “not comprehensive but rather illuminative of some aspects of how print media in the UK cover HIV and migration.” These include:

• HIV was primarily framed as a disease in Africa, signifying a shift from framing HIV as a ‘gay disease’.
• More than half of all articles in the national and ethnic press focused on HIV in countries outside the UK – mainly Africa. In the national press, 31 per cent (119 articles) included in the study looked at HIV as a domestic epidemic, whereas in the ethnic papers, 19 per cent (26 articles) focused on HIV in the UK.
• There was scant coverage of HIV and migration – approximately six per cent of the total coverage analysed, and those that did cover the issue often framed the story around legal issues (such as the prosecution of HIV transmission).
• Coverage of HIV-related tuberculosis (TB) was extremely low and there was no coverage of the combined issues of TB, HIV and migration.

Two community engagement meetings – with people living with HIV and their advocates, leaders within the African communities, doctors, faith leaders and journalists from the national and ethnic press – further informed the report. These meetings found that:

• Framing of stories that conflate but don’t investigate issues (such as HIV and undocumented migration and the vulnerability of African migrants in the UK) may contribute to stigma felt by African communities and Africans living with HIV in the UK.
• The media could “do more to promote debate about the underlying inequalities and stigma that make people vulnerable to HIV and hinder access to appropriate health services.”
• People living with HIV, HIV advocates and the African community can engage the media to show the human stories behind living positively with HIV, and encourage journalists to challenge – rather than perpetuate – the stigma that exists around HIV and AIDS in the UK.”

The report notes that “by overlooking the voices of African migrants...UK press coverage risks perpetuating stigma and processes of marginalisation that entrench inequality and vulnerability to HIV.”

“Overall,” it concludes, “the UK press could be better engaged to provide human stories about living positively with HIV, and to promote debate about the underlying inequalities that entrench vulnerability and limit access to appropriate health services. In doing so, the UK press could more effectively raise debate about HIV and confront stigma.”

Further information

AHPN and Panos London have produced a media briefing and HIV reporting guidelines on HIV and migrants, available from the Panos website.

The National AIDS Trust and the National Union of Journalists have also collaborated on more detailed HIV reporting guidelines, available from the NAT website.

International media for development NGO, the Thomson Foundation is collaborating with AHPN to deliver workshops to enhance the capacity of HIV advocates to work with BME media.