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Portuguese journalism and HIV/AIDS
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Portuguese Journalism and HIV/AIDS: A Case Study in News(1)
It is widely assumed that the mass media have played an
important role in communicating ideas about HIV/AIDS
(Beharrell, 1993:210). However, as Miller and Beharrell
(1993) have pointed out, there has been a lack of attention
to mass media context in much work on HIV/AIDS.
This case study intends to examine news coverage of
HIV/AIDS by a leading Portuguese morning daily, Di rio de
Not!cias, over more than a decade, that is, from June 1,
1981 to December 31, 1991. While this study enlightens our
understanding of how HIV/AIDS was presented to Portuguese
readers by a quality, century-old newspaper, comparable to
the New York Times in its editorial policy, it is our prime
objective in this study to better understand news. The
already vast literature on "newsmaking" recognizes the power
of journalism not only in the social projection of topics
but also in its power to frame those topics as a resource of
public discussion (Molotch and Lester, 1974).
Research questions
It is our concern to ask how journalism has constituted
HIV/AIDS as a resource of public discussion. The research
questions addressed in this paper are as follows:
When is HIV/AIDS chosen as a newsworthy issue?
Is news coverage of HIV/AIDS essentially "event-
oriented" or "issue-oriented"? Is news about HIV/AIDS mostly
reaction to specific events? What initiative have
journalists shown in news coverage of an issue that could
well be described as an "on-going story"? Has HIV/AIDS
become a "routine story"?
Why is HIV/AIDS news? What aspects have been more
newsworthy? Is it possible to identify recurring news
values? In a manner analogous to Rogers, Dearing and Chang's
(1991) study of American coverage of this social issue, can
we identify specific eras in news coverage and, if so, are
they similar to those identified in American journalism?
Since HIV/AIDS is a global problem, do factors such as
geographical and cultural proximity operate in news
coverage?
Who are the principal actors in news stories on
HIV/AIDS? Who has access to the news media?
Research methods
At this initial stage of research, a case study
approach was used. The influential Di rio de Not!cias has
been selected for analysis; founded in 1864 as a newspaper
that broke away from the logic of a partisan press, this
Lisbon-based, morning daily follows an editorial line
similar to that of the New York Times in that it position
itself as a newspaper of record, making available
information - "all the news that's fit to print".
Every edition of the newspaper has been examined to
locate all items (news, features, editorials, photographs,
cartoons, letters to the editor, interviews, articles of
opinion) printed between June 1, 1981 and December 31, 1991.
Advertisments were excluded. The first item located was
published in April 1982; no items were located in 1981.
Content analysis was used to examine the 1107 items
located. Each item was coded for the following aspects:
1) journalistic genre ("hard news", feature, editorial,
etc.);
2) location in the newspaper (front page, inner pages,
other "play"(front page of inner section);
3) Focus of the story (national or international);
4) geographic location as to continent (Africa, Europe,
North America, etc.);
5) precise geographic location in terms of country
(United States, France, Zambia, etc.);
6) content according to categories used by Rogers,
Dearing and Chang (2);
7) principal actor of item ("Government", "Medical-
cientific", "World Health Organization", etc.) (see note 3);
and 8) nature of "event/issue" referred to, that is,
event specific or not.
The findings reported here are viewed as tentative for
diverse reasons: 1) it is agreed that a more elaborate
content analysis is welcomed to answer in greater depth some
of the question we have posed; 2) a qualitative, more
discoursive analysis is appropriate to better "read" the
texture of news and better understand the nature of news in
a more narrative perspective; and 3) the "corpus" examined -
a decade of news - is extensive yet only comprehends the
news production of one journalistic operation. Nonetheless,
we contend that the findings merit attention and, above all,
offer important trails for further investigations in search
of news theory.
The findings
As shown in Table 1, news on HIV/AIDS has not increased
sistematically since 1981; indeed the number of items on
HIV/AIDS published in Di rio de Not!cias has dropped since
the "high-water mark" of 1987.
TABLE 1 - ITEMS ON HIV/AIDS PUBLISHED IN
DIARIO DE NOTICIAS
Month J. F. M. A. M. J. Ju A. S. O. N. D. Total
Year
1981 - - - - - 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1982 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 3
1983 0 0 1 1 5 0 5 2 4 0 1 1 19
1984 0 2 0 2 1 2 0 5 0 4 3 0 19
1985 2 1 2 2 0 5 5 13 15 15 3 4 67
1986 5 3 7 2 7 5 2 13 8 7 9 7 77
1987 12 22 19 32 17 25 26 11 26 25 12 26 253
1988 22 11 6 17 8 25 5 10 7 14 20 29 166
1989 12 14 13 32 21 29 16 14 16 6 15 11 199
1990 17 13 11 14 15 18 10 9 15 10 7 11 150
1991 11 4 9 11 9 19 11 9 8 11 22 22 146
----
1107
----------
The data clearly show that there were few items on
HIV/AIDS published in Di rio de Not!cias during an early
phase that Rogers, Dearing and Chang (1991:17) term the
"initial era". For these authors this first stage is
comprised of 23 months through April 1983, but our data
point to a longer period of time where news coverage of
HIV/AIDS is limited, namely until August 1985.
Contrary to American coverage, there is no sharp
increase of news coverage in our data in 1983, though the
number of items does increase from 3 in 1982 to 19 in 1983,
too small a number to be judged a break in the
"invisibility" of HIV/AIDS.
The data clearly show that Di rio de Not!cias largely
ignored HIV/AIDS until August 1985. Indeed, the weight of
the silence (few items on HIV/AIDS) overpowers the
dependence on scientific sources that also characterizes
this early phase and therefore does not justify a specific
designation, "scientific era", as proposed by Rogers,
Dearing and Chang. As we shall see, the importance of
biomedical actors and biomedical news) is particularly great
in 1982 but continues well into 1986 (see Table VI).
Our data clearly support the framing of HIV/AIDS as a
"homosexual story" in the early phase of news coverage.
Rogers, Dearing and Chang state that the American media
perceived the disease mainly as a gay story and "generally
accorded rather minor coverage to the epidemic". Kinsella
(1989:19) writes that HIV/AIDS became a bigger story only
when the "malady was affecting more than gays". For Beharrel
(1993:213), the representations of HIV/AIDS as a "gay
plague" suggested that "AIDS was being made to carry a heavy
burden of meanings and connotations quite extranious to the
virus and more to do with quite extraneous fears about
sexuality and social order". Simon Watney (1987:82)
concludes from his analysis of British coverage of HIV/AIDS
that the press prioritized the "stigmatisation of
homosexuality above all issues". Our data suggest that the
framing of HIV/AIDS as identified with homosexuals (there is
no designation in Portuguese similar to that of "gay")
persists well beyond 1983 into 1985 and 1986.
Indeed, as in the case of American coverage of
HIV/AIDS, the same specific event that occurred in 1985 -
Rock Hudson's hospitalization (July) and death (October) -
had a similar impact; it imbued HIV/AIDS with increased
newsworthiness due to the importance of notoriety of actor
as a news value (Galtung and Ruge, 1965).
Rogers, Dearing and Chang(1991:13) argue that the
Hudson story, as well as the Ryan White story, served to
"personalize and humanize the issue of AIDS, something that
prior media reports based on CDC statistics about the number
of AIDS cases per month had not done". In our case study,
the Ryan White story was not a factor.
After this first peak in news coverage of HIV/AIDS, the
evolution in the Portuguese case is similar to American news
coverage, as discussed in the Rogers, Dearing and Chang
study. There is a dramatic rise in the number of items on
HIV/AIDS in 1987, from 77 items in 1986 to 253 items in
1987: Since 1987, the number of items located in Di rio de
Not!cias dropped to 166 in 1988, rose again in 1989, and has
dropped continuously. We suggest that this decrease in the
number of items corresponds to the "routinization" of
HIV/AIDS, that is, from its typification as a "what-a-story"
(Tuchman, 1978), HIV/AIDS has become a "routine" story.
"Event-oriented" or "issue-oriented"
Journalism and time are intimately involved. Indeed,
the study of news must embrace an obligation to analyze
what perhaps may well be the central axis of the field of
journalism, utilizing the term "field" in French sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu's notion of an "intellectual field" defined
as "a system of social relations in which creation as an act
of communication takes place" (quoted in Schlesinger,
1990:77; also see Bourdieu, 1979; Bourdieu, 1984; Esteves,
1994).
The British sociologist Philip Schlesinger (1977:337)
writes "to study temporal concepts, and their role in its
production, is quite as relevant as the more well-worked
areas of 'news values', 'objectivity' and 'professionalism'.
Schlesinger adds: Our understanding of the production system
which gives birth to 'the news' is much enhanced when the
time-factor is clearly focused upon" (1977:377).
The American sociologist Michael Schudson (1986) has
also described journalists as persons with a
"chronomentality". Schlesinger underlines the same point
when he describes journalists as "members of a stop-watch
culture" (p.337) and news organizations as "a kind of time-
machine" (p.339).
News work is a daily practical activity whose tempo,
writes Tuchman (1978:134), "mandates an emphasis on events,
not issues. News organizations function within a specific
temporal cycle marked by deadlines. According to Tuchman
(1978), newswork is a daily practical activity whose tempo
"mandates an emphasis on events, not issues" (1978:134).
According to Tuchman (1978:134), events are "concretely
embedded in the web of facticity, the who, what, when,
where, why and how of the traditional news lead. Issues are
not". While Tuchman's analysis refers to news coverage of a
social movement (the women's movement in the United States),
it is pertinent to news coverage of a social issue, such as
HIV/AIDS.
According to Table II, items in our corpus
overwhelmingly refer to a specific event.
TABLE II - THE NATURE OF THE REFERRENT:
EVENT-SPECIFIC OR NOT
(in percentages)
Year 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 Total
YES 0 100 74 95 87 92 85 91 83 89 82 86
NO 0 0 16 5 13 6 15 7 16 9 14 12
N. A. 0 0 11 0 0 1 1 2 2 1 4 2
---------
Clearly news (most items are news stories, especially
"hard news", as we shall see in Table III) about HIV/AIDS is
"event-oriented". HIV/AIDS is news when specific events
tied to this issue arise, or, as the Portuguese sociologist
Adriano Duarte Rodrigues (1988:9) writes, "erupt the smooth
surface of history between the random multiplicty of virtual
facts". News about HIV/AIDS is rarely initiated by
journalists.
News organizations function within a specific time
cycle marked continuously, incessantly, despotically by
"deadlines". The tyranny of deadlines, the centrality of the
concept of "actuality" in journalism (Weaver, 1975), the
importance of "immediacy" as a news value (Roscho, 1975),
the imperative obligation of journalists to answer the
question "what's new?", all combine to povide readers what
Philips (1976) describes as "novelty without change".
Controlled by the stop-watch, dedicated to actuality,
obsessed with novelty, journalists are continuously in a
seemingly losing battle to react to (the latest) events. As
Traquina (1987:12) writes: "The 'invisibility' of processes
and issues requires journalism's capacity to respond,
requires resources to mount the coverage of something
undefined in space and time, requires time to work out
coverage, and, ironically, the subterfuge of time to
connect it (the isue) to actuality". Indeed, in the later
"era of routine", the World AIDS day is a "news peg" that
helps keep the issue of AIDS in the news.
For these reasons, news coverage is not proactive but
reactive. Our data show that news about HIV/AIDS appears in
Di rio de Not!cias when specific events (the release of a
press release, the realization of a conference, the court
condemnation of a seropositive man for rape, the
declarations of the Pope on the use of condoms, the death of
a Hollywood movie star). The specific "events" gain
newsworthiness if they involve noteworthy actors or
authoritative sources, as has already been suggested, but
needs to be stressed again.
The boom in news about HIV/AIDS in our data in 1987,
occurs after the Rock Hudson event projected HIV/AIDS from
the invisibility of the margins of the society, identified
as the issue was with such social outcasts as homosexuals,
to the news agenda, due to the journalistic news value of
notoriety.
Having been placed on the news agenda, the explosion in
news about HIV/AIDS in 1987 (see Table I) is the upshot of
journalists' dependecy on official sources at two levels: 1)
the increased increased number of statistical reports
underlying the detection of cases, where the narrative of
the "first reported case" in country x,y and z mobilized
another fundamental news value in journalism, namely
novelty, occurring for the first time; and 2) the increased
number of events tied to action taken by the " minence
grise" of the kingdom of official, governments, especially
if actions involve another key news value, controversy.
Journalists reacted to governmental initiatives - the
nomination of committees to organize the combat against
AIDS, public statements to calm the growing fear, the
launching of campaigns to prevent the spread of the "worst
plague of the twentieth century". Once it gained the news
agenda, HIV/AIDS becomes a "what-a-story" in 1987 - the
story of an invisible, deadly scourge that is spreading
throughout the world.
Rogers, Dearing and Chang (1991:21) explain the
capacity of the HIV/AIDS issue to resist as newsworthy as a
result of a succession of "sub-issues" that provided new
emphasis and new information. This formulation
discontextualizes news coverage from its refelxive ties to
news practices and obscures the importance of continuous
narratives that constitute the primary threads of HIV/AIDS
news, namely the "plague" story and the biomedical story.
One of the central tenets of the "newsmaking"
literature is that, as Leon V. Sigal (1986) writes, knowing
how news is made is the key to understanding what it means.
For Tuchman, the anarchistic nature of news - newsworthy
events can help at any time and anywhere - leads news
professionals to typify news events. A brief review of the
literature encounters valuable contributions. It is proposed
that a more precise understanding of the typification of
news events enables us to better understand the permanence
of the HIV/AIDS issue on the news agenda.
News typifications
Media studies and, more specifically, the sociology of
news, have offered interesting classficiations of events,
that, it should be noted, are not mutually exclusive. In
1961, Daniel Boorstin pointed to the increased importance of
"pseudo-events" in modern society, defining this type of
event as unspontaneous happenings, planted primarily (not
always exclusively) for the immediate purpose of being
reported or reproduced" (1971:120).
Follwing a similar reflection on media's growing role
in society, Elihu Katz (1980) coined the term "media
events". Katz defined "the necessary conditions of media
events to be 1) live transmission, 2) of a preplanned event,
3) framed in time and space, 4) featuring a heroic
personality or group, 5) having high dramatic or ritual
significance and 6) the force of a social norm which makes
viewing mandatory" (p. 85).
Molotch and Lester (1974) offer a more complete
typology of events. For Molotch and Lester, "routine news
events" are distinguishable by the fact that "the underlying
happenings on which they are presumably based are purposive
accomplishments and by the fact that the people who
undertake the happenings (called "effectors") are identified
with those who promote them into events" (pp. 126-127. Two
other categories that Molotch and Lester offer as useful for
news analysis are "accidents" and "scandals". "Accidents"
are defined as "unintentional happenings" while "scandals"
are intentional happenings whose promotor is a third party
not directly involved in the occurrence.
In her seminal analysis of news, the American
sociologist Gaye Tuchman(1978) defends the position that
newsworkers have developed "typifications", defined as
classifications arising from practical purposive action"
(p.46), to control work. "What-a-story" is defined as an
unscheduled and specifically unforeseen happening, imbued
with such a dos of newsworthiness to provoke excited
reaction and "bedlam" in the newsroom (pp.59-63). Tuchman
offers other typifications: 1) "spot" news events, defined
as a subclassification of "hard news" that is unscheduled,
appears suddenly and must be processed quickly; 2)
"developing" news events as another classification of "hard
news" associated with a "breaking story" and distinct from
"continuing news events" because it is unscheduled; 3)
"continuing news events", defined as a series of stories on
the subject based upon pre-scheduled events occurring over a
period of time. For Tuchman, "spot news events", "developing
news events", "continuing news events" and "what-a-story"
are all "hard news", defined as "factual presentations of
occurrences deemed newsworthy" (p.47), as opposed to "soft
news", defined as "news that concerns human foibles" (p.48).
In addition, the "hard news" category would most certainly
include "accidents", "scandals" and most "routine news
events".
The data presented in Table III clearly show that the
overwhelming majority of items is news, and, in particular
"hard news".
The main journalistic genre is news, occupying always
more than 80% of the items, and, frequently more than 90%.
There are few articles of opinion, letters to the editor,
interviews and editorials. The first Di rio de Not!cias
editorial on HIV/AIDS was published on the 19th of
September, 1987 on required HIV testing in the Soviet Union.
TABLE III - JOURNALISTIC GENRES
(in percentages)
Year 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 Total
Genre
Hard 0 100 95 100 89 89 88 88 84 89 83 87
news
Soft 0 0 0 0 7 3 6 3 7 5 10 6
news
Inter- 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 1 0 3 1
view
Edito- 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 1 1 0 1
rial
Opinion 0 0 5 0 1 1 1 2 2 2 1 2
Photo/
cartoon 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 2 6 2 3 3
Other 0 0 0 0 1 5 1 3 1 1 0 1
N. A.(*) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
(*) Not applicable
----------
News on HIV/AIDS is almost entirely "hard news"; hard
news clearly dominantes over soft news, which only appears
in our corpus in 1985, again tied to the Rock Hudson news
event, with items about Hudson's movie careers. In general,
peaks in news coverage include an increase in soft news
items; this occurs, for example, in 1987 and in 1989.
The hard news category englobes a wide diversity of
news events: Let us begin with two that are particularly
crucial to understanding the persistency of HIV/ADIS as a
newsworthy issue: "developing news" and "continuing news".
Framed as a medical story, the HIV/AIDS issue is a
"developing news event" that revolves around the search for
a vaccine and the unexpected discoveries related to the
virus. Equally important, the HIV/AIDS issue is the
"continuing" story of a deadly menace that is constantly
spreading; the reams of statistics about the number of
infected and dead is a constant feature of HIV/ADIS
coverage. Both have become routinized (the release of
monthly reports and the regular pbulication of scientific
journals, such as New England Journal of Medicine),
explaining in large part how the HIV/AIDS issue has become a
"routine story".
But the news coverage of HIV/AIDS envolves other types
of events: "Spot news events" (Names Project volunteers
gather in Washingtion, Danish taxi cab drivers hand out
condoms, a Catholic bishop condemns sexual promiscuity);
"pseudo-events" (the Health minister visits an AIDS patient
hospital ward on the World AIDS day; a pres conference is
held to launch a summer campaign promoting the use of
condoms); "scandals" (hundreds of French are infected with
the HIV virus due to blood transfusions, a hospital refuses
treatment to HIV-positive patient); "accident" (a dentists
transmits the HIV virus to a patient, a nurse pricks her
finger on a HIV-contaminated needle); more "routine news
events" (another seminar on AIDS transmission, another World
AIDS day); and even "what-a-story" news events that stop the
presses (a famous Hollywood movie star succumbs to AIDS-
related infection, Magic Johnson reveals he is HIV-
positive). However, in our case study, no news event even
remotely fulfilling the requiremnents of Katz's "media
event" was detected, as would be expected.
But within the multiplicity of events, the weight of
"developing news", most notably events associated with
biomedical activities, and "continuing news events", have
routinized HIV/AIDS news coverage, all the more so when pre-
scheduled occurrences such as international conventions, the
publication of medical journals, and World AIDS day, have
kept the HIV/AIDS issue on the news agenda. Now let us
examine what aspects of the HIV/AIDS issue have obtained the
most news coverage.
The content of news coverage
Table IV shows the percentage of items in each of the
14 issue categories. Two categories, "biomedical" and
"epidemic", are the dominant categories that account for
approximately 40% of the items located from June 1981 to
December 1991.
TABLE IV - CONTENT CATEGORY OF ALL ITEMS(a)
( in percentages)
Year 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 Total
Category
Children 0 0 0 5 7 3 2 1 5 5 1 3
Public 0 33 3 11 13 5 3 1 2 3 6 4
Figures
Epidemic 0 67 16 16 19 23 18 19 15 16 15 18
Biomedical 0 0 37 42 19 30 17 22 21 21 13 20
Prevention 0 0 0 6 3 1 4 9 18 12 13 9
Discrimina- 0 0 6 0 3 5 5 3 4 9 7 5
tion
People's 0 0 0 0 1 1 2 1 3 4 4 2
Help
Government 0 0 1 5 6 13 15 5 7 5 5 8
Policy
Civil 0 0 0 5 0 0 3 7 3 3 3 3
Rights
Ethics 0 0 0 0 1 0 6 2 5 5 5 4
Human 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 1 1
Interest
Poll 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 2 1 1 1 1
Results
Hemo- 0 0 0 0 6 6 2 5 2 1 14 4
philiacs
Others 0 0 21 16 18 8 28 18 11 11 7 16
Not Appli- 0 0 5 0 0 1 0 6 2 3 3 2
cable
(a) The categories are a slight modification of those used in
Rogers, Dearing and Chang(1991)
----------
The "biomedical" category is clearly dominant in the
early phase, but remains the prime category in all years of
the period examined, with the exception of 1987 and 1991.
The "epidemic" category constantly represent between 15% and
20% of the items., systematically either the first or the
second most important category for all years, except in
1987, when the "government policy" category occupies the
primary position.
The preeminence of the "biomedical" category and the
"epidemic" category appear as the two pillars of a news
story that privileges scientist in search of a cure for the
"plague-then-epidemic" that spreads globally. In her study
of American coverage of HIV/AIDS, Susan Sontag (1989) has
argued that "plague" is the principal metaphor by which AIDS
is understood. Park (1993:241) suggests that the idea of
moral plague is peculiarly characteristic of European
Christian culture. In our case study, the "plague" metaphor
was evoked primarily during the period 1985 to 1987 when
panic and terror are clearly tones in news coverage.
For Di rio de Not!cias, HIV/AIDS is not a political or
a social story but primarily a medical story. HIV/AIDS news
is more about numbers than it is about people, a key point
that we will develop when we discuss the principle actors in
HIV/AIDS news.
American news coverage of HIV/AIDS also emphasized the
"biomedical" category, but, the Rogers, Dearing and Chang
study clearly shows that principal category is "government
policy". Our data reveal what may well be one of the most
intriguing features of Portuguese coverage of HIV/AIDS: with
the exception of 1987, the "government policy" category is
secondary category in Di rio de Not!cia's coverage.
Table V shows the percentage of only the items with a
national (Portuguese) focus in each of the 14 categories.
TABLE V - CONTENT CATEGORY OF ALL NATIONAL ITEMS (a)
(in percentages)
Year 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 Total
Category
Children 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 7 10 0 4
Public 0 0 0 40 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 1
Figures
Epidemic 0 0 50 20 47 62 21 15 7 8 8 16
Biomedical 0 0 0 0 0 15 10 6 12 8 3 7
Prevention 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 2 32 23 30 16
Discrimina- 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 0 8 10 4
tion
People's 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 13 10 4
Help
Government 0 0 0 0 0 0 17 0 2 3 0 3
Policy
Civil 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 5 3 0 3
Rights
Ethics 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 2 4 0 3 2
Human 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 3 1
interest
Poll 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 2 3 3 2
Results
Hemo. 0 0 0 0 13 15 5 13 3 0 20 8
philiacs
Others 0 0 50 40 40 8 31 26 18 18 5 21
Not Appli- 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 17 0 5 10 6
cable
(a) The categories are a slight modification of those used in
Rogers, Dearing and Chang (1991).
----------
One clear contrast between the data in Table IV and V
is the almost inexistence of the category "government
policy" in HIV/AIDS news about Portugal, with the notable
exception of the year 1987. As will become clear in the data
regarding principle actor (see Tables VI and VII),
governmental officials - generally the "king-pins" of
officialdom - are conspicuously infrequent in national
HIV/AIDS news.
In the news coverage of Portuguese national items on
HIV/AIDs, the category "epidemic" is clearly crucial well
beyond the early years into 1986. However, since 1989, the
dominant news category is "prevention", largely composed of
routine events, such as conferences and symposiums, that are
prescheduled, and campaigns to prevent the spread of AIDS,
including a controversial policy directed at drug addicts to
exchange needles gratuitously. The recent surge of the
"people's help" category is indicative of initiatives by
non-government organizations that appeared in Portugal only
at the beginning of the '90s.
Nonetheless, HIV/AIDS news is largely about numbers.
With the exception of two of the five news stories in 1984
(and thus the 40%) about the death of a pop singer (though
the news item makes no reference to AIDS), the famous people
category is virtually non-existent. Also, the "human
interest" category is also non-existent until 1989 - clear
signs of the difficultly in covering an issue strongly
identified with social tabus.
Much more can be said about the data in these two
tables, but only one more point will be underlined. It has
been stated that news coverage of HIV/AIDS (in this case
study) is primarily a medical story; it is certainly not a
political story as the sum of the categories "government
policy", "civil rights" and "hemophiliacs", only exceeds 20%
in 1987 and 1991. It should be added that the "hemophiliacs"
category did represent 14% in all items and 20% in
Portuguese news, a clear indication of the importance of the
"scandal" of blood transfusions in France and Portugal,
later, in 1983, in Germany. Moreover, news on HIV/AIDS in
our case study is clearly only a social story in recent
years. Social aspects of HIV/AIDS, as accounted in such
categories as "children with AIDS", "discrimination",
"ethics", "people's help", have jointly only represented
more than 20% of news coverage since 1989.
The principle actors in HIV/AIDS news
One of the pivotal conclusions of the sociology of news
literature is the dominant role of official sources in news
production (Sigal, 1973; Bagdikian, 1974; Molotch and
Lester, 1974; Molotch and Lester, 1975; Tuchman, 1978; Hall
et. al., 1978; Hallin, 1984; Schudson, 1986, Sood et. al.,
1987; Bruck, 1989; Olien et al., 1989; Schlesinger, 1990;
Schlesinger and Tumler, 1994).
A British study that specifically examined source-media
interaction in HIV/AIDS information states that "alternative
voices" are able to intervene but Miller and Williams
(1993:139) conclude: "We would not disagree that powerful
sources play a crucial role in determining the output of the
news media".
The data in our study (see Tables VI and VII) support
the position that official sources are dominant, denoting as
a specific characteristic of HIV/AIDS news the crucial role
of one particular group of authorized sources, namely
biomedical actors.
TABLE VI - PRINCIPLE ACTORS IN ALL ITEMS
(in percentages)
Year 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 T
Actor
WHO 0 0 5 0 0 10 9 15 9 11 6 9
Govern- 0 0 11 16 13 12 16 14 9 7 12 12
ment
Gov't. 0 33 5 16 9 6 7 7 11 9 2 7
Agency
Other Auth. 0 0 11 0 6 4 6 6 4 4 10 6
Biomedical 0 67 42 47 37 44 28 24 28 24 23 29
P. Parties 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
Religious 0 0 0 0 1 0 3 1 5 5 1 2
Org.
Non-gov't. 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 4 8 2
Org.
People with 0 0 5 16 15 9 8 3 8 11 16 9
HIV/AIDS
Hemo- 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 1 1 1 5 2
philiacs
Others 0 0 16 5 13 10 18 15 23 20 14 17
Not Appl. 0 0 5 0 4 1 6 13 5 4 3 6
For a complete explanation of the actor categories, see note (3.
T is % of total items in that category.
----------
However, due to the low priority that top-level
government officials have given to the HIV/AIDS issue (with
the notable exception of 1987), in particular in Portugal,
news about AIDS can provide a place for "alternative
voices". Nonetheless, one fundamental aspect of our data is
that news about HIV/AIDS rarely features those most directly
involved in the issue, namely people with HIV/AIDS.
Table VI shows that biomedical actors are almost
hegemonic in the early phase of news coverage from 1982 to
1985, but, maintain an important position in subsequent
years, oscillating between 20% and 30% as principle actor in
HIV/AIDS news stories. Biomedical actors are also important
in news stories with a Portuguese focus, in particular
during the period 1983 to 1985 (see Table VII).
TABLE VII - PRINCIPLE ACTOR IN ITEMS WITH NATIONAL FOCUS
(in percentages)
Year 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 T
Actor
WHO 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 6 0 0 0 2
Govern- 0 0 0 0 20 0 2 19 2 0 5 6
ment
Gov't 0 0 50 0 7 23 12 7 18 23 5 13
Agency
Other Auth. 0 0 0 0 7 0 17 7 5 5 8 7
Biomedical 0 0 0 40 53 46 24 11 27 18 13 22
P. Parties 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0
Religious 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 5 3 3 2
Org.
Non-gov't. 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 4 0 10 20 6
Org.
People with 0 0 0 40 0 8 12 4 2 5 3 5
HIV/AIDS
Hemo- 0 0 0 0 0 8 2 0 2 3 10 3
philiacs
Others 0 0 0 20 13 8 14 22 33 23 25 23
Not Appl. 0 0 50 0 0 8 7 19 7 10 10 10
For a complete explanation of the actor categories, see note (3).
T is percentage of total items in category.
----------
Officials sources, defined here as the sum of the
categories "government", "government agency", "other
authority", "WHO" and "biomedical", are privileged sources,
though it is important to note that their overwhelming
presence has attenuated over the decade. According to Table
VI, official sources are principle actors in over 70% of
news stories in the early phase of news coverage (1982-1984)
and in the year 1986. From 1985 to 1989, over 60% of news
stories feature official sources as the principle actor.
Since 1989, the weight of official sources has eroded to 55%
in 1990 and 51% in 1991. Globally, official sources are the
principle actor in 63% of the items of our corpus.
It is particularly interesting to note that political
parties are rarely sources in HIV/AIDS news.
A growing percentage of HIV/AIDS stories feature actors
from non-official actors. The sum of the categories
"others", "non-government" "blood donors" and "people with
HIV/AIDS", has grown: from between 20% and 30% in the period
1983 to 1988, these actors have been featured in over 30% of
the news stories since 1989.
The data show that non-government organizations are
increasingly featured as principle actor in HIV/AIDS news
(4% in 1990 and 8% in 1991) but their appearance is
surprisingly recent - they appear for the first in 1987
(though still less that one percent).
Two further points must be underlined.
First, the presence of government sources as actors has
oscillated over the period in analysis; they are
particularly important (over 30%) in the early phase, and
almost always are featured as principle actor in over 20% of
news stories. However, since the "high-water" year of 1987,
the weight of government sources has declined constantly.
In news with a Portuguese focus, top level government
sources are less present than in all items of our corpus.
Government actions help set the news agenda; in Portugal,
our data show that high-level government officials did not
have HIV/AIDS on their agenda. Indeed, a careful reading of
the news finds that the Portuguese Prime Minister is only
once involved in a HIV/AIDS stories, and the Minster of
Health spoke of the issue once to state that HIV/AIDS was
not a serious problem in the country (June 1, 1988). At no
time was there an energetic response by Portuguese policy-
makers. A "Working group on AIDS" was created in 1985, but a
more institutionalized agency was only created in 1990,
namely the "National Committee to Combat AIDS". A "National
Plan to Combat AIDS" was enacted in July of 1993; the plan
included the creation of an "information bulletin" (Santos,
1996).
Secondly, as has been stated, HIV/AIDS news is clearly
more about numbers than it is about people (except
celebrities).
Journalists have talked more with scientists, doctors
and government officials than they have with patients. The
first interview with a Portuguese HIV/AIDS person appeared
in April of 1989, in the bleek surroundings of a hospital
ward.
Quite simply, people with HIV/AIDS have not been
principle actors in many news stories. As shown in Tables VI
and VII, "people with HIV/AIDS" are rarely principal actors
in more than 15% of the items. The relatively high
percentages in 1984, 1985 and 1991 are largely due to the
involvement of celebrities (the deaths of Portuguese pop
singer Ant"nio Varia oes (1984) and Hollywood movie idol
Rock Hudson (1985) and Magic Johnson's announcement of being
HIV-positive in 1991).
Otherwise, people with HIV/AIDS are largely news in
extreme situations, following the logic of the well-known
definition of news - the clich that "man bites dog is
news". Thus, people with HIV/AIDs in news are almost always
news either as 1) the desperate person - the crazed man who
cannot confront his HIV-positive condition and decides to
kill his family or rape a prostitute; or 2) the demented
individual (a HIV-positive drug addict) that injects friends
with contaminated needles or bites officers ofthe law; or 3)
the famous person (Hudson, Liberace, Eddie Mercury, Brad
Davis), or individual close to a famous person (the former
butler of Prince Charles) that has succumbed to the HIV
virus. Indeed, only a a more qualitative reading of the news
can capture the strong association of HIV/AIDS with death.
For the HIV-positive reader who has the habit of
consuming news, the daily exposure must be a continuous
exercise in despair. This study clearly suggests that news
about HIV/AIDS fails to mention the possible existence of
another dimension of the complex issue - the story of untold
numbers of people who are living with the virus.
The geographic factor in HIV/AIDS news
In one of the first theorectical examination of news
values in journalism, Galtung and Ruge (1965) underlined the
importance of geographical and cultural proximity. Our data
does tend to support this position. Briefly, as seen in
Table VIII, national news with local involvement represents
globally 24% of our 1107 items. Certainly, other national
newspaper would give less attention to Portugal.
TABLE VIII - GEOGRAPHIC FOCUS OF ALL ITEMS
(in percentages)
Year 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 T
Category
Foreign 0 67 84 74 76 81 77 64 67 71 71 72
Without
Portuguese
involvement
Foreign 0 33 5 0 1 1 2 3 2 3 3 2
With Port.
involvement
National 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Without
Portuguese
Involvement
National 0 0 11 26 22 17 17 31 30 26 27 24
With Port.
Involvement
Not 0 0 0 0 0 1 4 2 2 1 0 2
Applicable
----------
However, foreign news about HIV/AIDS dominates in our
case study. The importance of sources in journalism and the
"event-oriented" nature of journalism make "international
news without Portugal's involvement" the prime focus of news
coverage. With regard to specific country's, the United
States is the leading principal country (270 times),
followed by Portugal (269), World health Organization (81),
France (60), Brasil (39), United Kingdom (38), Germany 35)
and Spain (27).
Geographically, news coverage is rather concentrated;
these eight countries account for 74% of the news. The
"cultural proximity" also appears to be of some importance.
For example, of 43 references to Latin American countries,
81% refer to Brazil. A similar phenomenon occurs with
African news. Of 49 news stories on Africa, 43% refer to
former Portuguese colonies.
Concluding remarks: Back to the eras
Rogers, Dearing and Chang identify four eras in
American news coverage of the HIV/AIDS issue: the initial
era, the scientific era, the personal era, and the political
era. Their study covers the period from June 1981 to
December 1988.
While this case study does cover a longer period (to
the end of 1991), our analysis largely supports the
evolution of news reported in the Rogers, Dearing and Chang
study, though the designation of one period as a "scientific
era" is considered to be misleading due to the constant
presence of the "biomedical" category in Portuguese news. As
stated, the dominant story in Portuguese news coverage is
the medical story.
Nonetheless, a first stage, here labelled as the
"invisible era", extends till the crucial moment that also
marked Portuguese news, the Rock Hudson story. In this
"invisible era", HIV/AIDS is not a newsworthy issue. News is
marked by the strong presence of biomedical sources and
framed as a homosexual story. Indicatively, the first new
story ran the headline "Homosexual Cancer".
Similar to the Rogers, Dearing and Change analysis, a
"personal era" and a "political era" follow. The Rock Hudson
news event propelled the HIV/AIDS issue to the front pages
and on the news agenda. There is an slow increase in the
number of news stories. The news offered a series of double
messages: public reassurances to tranquilize growing fears
and new metaphors such as the image of the "ghost" to kindle
the panic.
In our case study, the "high-water mark" of 1987
belongs to the "political era". It is marked by a sharp boom
in news about HIV/AIDS and the presence of dark metaphors -
the "plague", the "black peste", the "unprecendented
catastrophe". Poltical actors, in particular governments,
launch campaigns to combat the "worst illness of the
century; 1988 is designed the "Year To Battle AIDS".
Policies to require HIV testing generate controversy.
Since 1988, HIV/AIDS coverage has fallen into the "era
of routine". The developing story of biomedical news, often
appearing in routine fashion via the publication of science
journals, and the continuous story of the "epidemic", via
the monthly and tri-monthly release of statistics, combine
with pre-scheduled events (debates, conventions, World AIDS
day), to make the HIV/AIDS issue primarily a "routine
event". A few "spot news events", charged with
newsworthiness, such as the Magic Johnson story or the blood
transfusion "scandals", sporadically shake journalistic
routines and dislocate the HIV/AIDS issue from the shadows
of the inner pages to the limelight of the front page.
Notes
(1) The author thanks the Luso-American Foundation for Development
(FLAD) for its financial support that made it possible for him to attend the
AEJMC convention. The author also thanks both undergraduate and graduate
students who provided the invaluable aid of gathering the corpus examined in
this paper.
(2) The Rogers, Dearing and Chang cateogries were modified slightly
by the introduction of an addition (14th category), namely "Hemophiliacs").
(3) The principle actor categories used in the study are as follows:
1) WHO - World Health Organization; 2) Government - References to top-level
officials and terms such as "government", "Ministry of Health"; 3) Government
Agency - References to specific government bodies created to "combat AIDS"; 4)
Other authority - References to local government, police, court; 5)Biomedical -
Reference to scientists, medical experts; 6) Political parties - References to
political parties and leaders; 7) Religious organizations - References to all
religious groups,and references to the Pope; 8) Non-government organizations -
Only includes references to non-government organizations specifically connected
with HIV/AIDS, such as "Act-Up"; 9) People with HIV/AIDS - References to
specific individuals who are HIV-positive or ill with AIDS-related symptoms
(including people who want to maintain their anonymity); also includes case of a
Portuguese pop singer, who is believed to have died from AIDS; 10) Hemophiliacs
- References to blood donors or associations that defend their interests; 11)
Others - References to all other actors, including other non-government
associations, such as nurses' union; 12) Not applicable - News stories make
only tangential reference to HIV/AIDS.
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