By Danny Schechter

DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA: If AIDS is South Africa's principal threat, football (or soccer, as Americans know it) is its principal passion. I came here for an international AIDS talkfest, but all the country was talking about was the World Cup. The press and the public were up in arms due to the just-announced loss to Germany of South Africa's bid to host the World Cup competition in 2006.

The process was being denounced as racist and rigged in Europe's favor. ("First World über alles" was the headline in Johannesburg's Mail & Guardian.) Another paper reported that a student Web site has added an animated game, complete with the logo of the international sporting body and a Nazi swastika, whose objective is to permit players to vent frustrations at a New Zealand official who refused to cast his ballot for South Africa by kicking a soccer ball into his testicles. "I know Germans will be offended, but maybe the world will now realize how offended we Africans are at being robbed once again," said the game's promoter.

Africans have more important reasons to be offended, according to Barton Gellman's June 5 Washington Post report detailing the West's failure to respond to the AIDS pandemic. The piece includes comments attributed to a high level official in the U.S. national intelligence council, who said, "Oh, it will be good because Africa is overpopulated anyway." Another responded to a report about AIDS in African militaries by saying it "boosts morale because there's more room for advancement."

This about a disease that has infected 53 million people worldwide, with a devastating 19 million dead in Africa, "roughly the population along the AMTRAK rail route from New York to Washington," according to the Post. An estimated 25 million are infected on the African continent.

Whose balls do we kick for a plague that is finally being discussed as a global disaster? That's what a CIA study called it 13 years ago, but only now are its international dimensions being taken seriously. Those 13 years have seen a sickening history of delay and denial by virtually everyone — Western governments, the United Nations and the national governments that have moved far too slowly in most cases. African countries like Senegal and Uganda did manage to bring the infection rate down by swift action, but others, including South Africa, are suffering the consequences of inaction, with tens of millions of citizens now HIV positive.

The Media's Role

AIDS coverage is subject to the same laws that govern other coverage. On TV, here and in the West, African lions still get more prime-time documentary coverage than African people. Whereas coverage in the West about Africa has shrunk, South African TV devotes far more resources to sports coverage than AIDS reporting.

But once every few years, a mega-event like an international AIDS conference supplies the "hook" that attracts the media pack. The world media is here in droves, intrigued by the first such event held in Africa, the continent most plagued by the disease. Yet the conference is not happening in the bush or in townships overrun with AIDS deaths and orphans. It is taking place in the ultramodern Durban conference center, which could be in any capital in the world and is hardly reflective of the KwaZulu Natal region, the epicenter of South Africa's raging epidemic. Many delegates are afraid of venturing out of its secure confines. The local press has been complaining about camera crews paying locals for interviews and for access to nearby villages to pick up visuals on a hit and run basis. But this is a typical complaint. There are many press events at the conference to keep the media busy.

In the run-up to the conference, detailed reports with the latest data on the pandemic, like those from UNAIDS, were released, then picked up by the wire services and leading newspapers. They framed the key issues, with little critical analysis of their findings or of the problem, with few exceptions. The Washington Post distinguished itself with original reporting, as did a handful of veteran AIDS journalists like Laurie Garrett in Newsday and Michael Waldholz of The Wall Street Journal, who filed long accounts from African communities of the growing orphan crisis. Mark Shoofs, who won a Pulitzer for his work on AIDS for the Village Voice, was also here. He has now been hired by The Wall Street Journal, perhaps signaling a new commitment from major newspapers to follow the story more closely. In South Africa, I was impressed by the reporting of Belinda Beresford and Khadija Magardie in the Daily Mail & Guardian on the high price of anti-AIDS drugs.

For some media outlets, the magnet was less the AIDS issue per se than the controversy over the causes of AIDS triggered by South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has questioned the conventional wisdom of the AIDS establishment. His speech opening the event argued that poverty, not a single virus, is responsible for Africa's affliction. The speech provided sparks for a debate that was played prominently. NBC covered that event not only because it is now a certified world story but because TV news always looks more for heat than light. The AIDS dissidents Mbeki had embraced have long used the Web to get their analysis into public view; in fact, that's where Mbeki was introduced to their views. As the meeting ended Nelson Mandela tried to unify it with an inspirational address, noting: "So much unnecessary attention around this conference [has] been directed toward a dispute that is unintentionally distracting from the real, life-and-death issues we are confronted with as a country, a region, a continent and a world." He could have been commenting on the media's excessive focus on the issue.

CNN and the BBC are here, along with a small army of international journalists, myself among them. We are being well taken care of. There is an efficiently run Media Center with 200 seats and more than 140 telephones and modem connections to serve our needs. There are press briefings daily, featuring visiting officials and international organizations of every kind. A small team cranks out copies of papers and speeches for our consumption. Closed circuit TV booms the plenaries into the newsroom, and if you can find a place in front of one of the 39 networked computers you can follow the Webcast on a constantly updated Web site.

MTV was here, too, planning a new "Staying Alive" documentary aimed at young people who are the most at risk. They want to fight the stigmas and myths about AIDS that make young people think they are invulnerable or lead to horrendous events like the death by stoning of Gugu Dlamini, an HIV-positive woman who went public with her status on World AIDS Day 1998, only to be killed for revealing it. A group of delegates led by actor and MediaChannel advisor Danny Glover went to her grave to pay respects. I sat in on an MTV brainstorming session led by a concerned executive, Bill Roedy of MTV International, who sought input from young people about the right message and story mix. I was impressed with the youth involvement. Two young sisters, Mary and Catherine Phiri from Lusaka, Zambia, stood out, offering suggestions of the type they write about in Youth Media, their own outlet (write to: trends@zamnest.zm), as did the ideas of a young Zimbabwean, Itai Madamome, who has trained in public-health communications.

While it is important for media outlets to provide more AIDS information and safe-sex messages, there's also a need for more investigative and analytical coverage of the nature of the pandemic. Mark Shoofs argued at one panel that journalism has to get the meaning of events right. Laurie Garrett likened the challenge of reporting on AIDS to coverage of the Black Plague in the Middle Ages and called on media outlets to treat it with the blanket coverage they reserve for wars. Lucky Mazibuko, an HIV-positive columnist for the Sowetan, South Africa's highest circulation newspaper, said, "Journalists are the eyes and ears of their societies. They should learn more about HIV/AIDS and stop reporting the issue from a distance." Criticisms were raised of TV coverage for not doing enough to educate the public, and for focusing more on entertainment than information.

It is also time for media outlets to begin looking at AIDS as more than a disease that infects individuals. It is a social and economic crisis. There needs to be more attention paid to how it is destroying families, communities and even nations, in terms of the social and political crises it is leaving in its wake. One issue that will definitely be on the agenda more as a result of the conference is the plight of children orphaned by the pandemic. UNICEF puts the figure at 40 million by the end of the decade; NGOs, like FXB led by Countess Albina du Bosrouvray, say its more like l00 million when you add other vulnerable children, such as those living on the street worldwide. This is the crisis within the AIDS crisis just waiting to explode.

There is also new AIDS scholarship worth covering. Scholars like Tony Barnett of England's Norwich University, working in the tradition of AIDS pioneer Jonathan Mann, is evolving an approach rooted in a framework of political economy that examines AIDS as the first international disease of the era of globalization. He is writing a book on the subject that links the spread of AIDS to the deepening of poverty and the growing gaps between rich and poor nations. More watchdog journalism is needed on the effectiveness of the hundreds of millions of dollars being pumped into Africa by the United States and other donors. Who is getting it, and how effective is it? What about the roles of the World Bank or the IMF, which require that countries receiving structural adjustment support (policies that promote free enterprise solutions to economic development) impose user fees at clinics that should be free? And what about the debt that African countries carry, which makes it harder for them to find resources to fight AIDS?

AIDS was in the news this week in part because so many experts were accessible in one place and because there was a sophisticated infrastructure for global information delivery that enabled the media to pump stories out around the clock. But what will happen when the conference closes up shop (to reopen two years hence in Barcelona)? This conference has its mandate to "Break the Silence." Will the media revert to its own silence after a week of high-profile AIDS coverage?

AS THE MEDIA WATCH THE WORLD, WE WATCH THE MEDIA.

The Media Channel is a not-for-profit project of OneWorld and The Global Center, and is produced by Globalvision New Media.