At a conservative estimate, more than thirty million people worldwide are living with HIV/AIDS, and every year at least two million die from AIDS-related illness. That equates to more than 5,000 people dying every day. More than 200 people per hour. Four people every minute.
Somebody every fifteen seconds is dying from a condition that is both preventable and treatable. And yet HIV/AIDS has dropped off the media radar. Perhaps because we face new threats from the global financial crisis, international conflict, and global warming. And so I found myself enduring a midsummer heatwave in Vienna - and the air conditioning in the Thomson Reuters conference room was struggling to cope. But the only person perspiring was yours truly, fresh from a chilly UK, while my feisty new friends from the Caribbean defied jet-lag and the heat for a two-day workshop on reporting HIV/AIDS.
This was not a group of cub reporters, but eight experienced and talented broadcast journalists from across the Caribbean, who had been invited to Vienna by the Caribbean Broadcast Media Partnership (CBMP) to cover the 18th International World Aids Conference, with a daily satellite feed throughout the event.
TRF provided the Vienna facilities and my 'expertise' for a two-day workshop designed to help them report on the conference clearly and compellingly for an audience that is the second most affected by HIV/AIDS after sub-Saharan Africa, and for a region where the stigma and taboo of HIV/AIDS raises extreme challenges for a journalist looking to engage their audience and to challenge the authorities.
The first issue we focussed on was how to make conference coverage interesting. Dozens of speeches by doctors, politicians, and campaigners is a recipe for boredom. So we discussed the need to plan each day's coverage in advance. To focus on the speakers and the topics that would most resonate with the target audience. We discussed the need to paraphrase what can often be complicated jargon, and the need to look for short soundbites, ideally from a one-to-one interview rather than lifting from 'pool' coverage of set-piece addresses. We discussed how to give the reports 'movement' rather than just 'talking heads' - by ensuring the camera captures senior delegates entering the conference hall or doing walkabouts. And we focussed on the value of shooting wallpaper, video and audio, that contextualises and adds drama to the reports - city scenes, banners, protests etc
Secondly, we discussed 'AIDS-speak'. While journalists still like to use words and phrases such as "AIDS Victims", "Gay men", "Prostitutes", "Drug addicts", the HIV/AIDS expert community has a language of its own: "People Living With HIV", "Men who have sex with men", "Sex workers", "People who use drugs". We agreed that these terms are not formed from political correctness, but genuine accuracy, and that in some cases explaining the terminology to viewers and listeners is integral to getting the message across. HIV/AIDS still carries a terrible stigma when in fact it's a condition more manageable than diabetes - more easily treated, and more easily avoidable.
And finally we discussed the protocol of interviewing somebody who might be living with HIV/AIDS. The World AIDS Campaign put forward a speaker who was prepared to describe how he contracted HIV and the emotional rollercoaster that involved. Gavin Reid from GNP+ (the Global Network of People Living with HIV) described how he wept with self pity when diagnosed as being infected with HIV. He shared how he wondered if his tears carried HIV, which only made him cry more.
But then he described how his medication has been reduced from dozens to just a handful of pills each day, and how he is lucky enough now to look forward to a long and healthy life. Over the course of an hour the atmosphere in the room shifted from shock and embarrassment to warmth and laughter. But not everybody is as lucky as Gavin in having access to the drugs -at a cost of just $150 a year- or the cultural support that make HIV a nuisance rather than a death sentence.
As so often on TRF courses, I flew home reflecting that I had learned as much as I had taught.
By James Thomas
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