No Good News: Media coverage of HIV/AIDS from 1993-2007

Background: HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects African Americans and has throughout the majority of the epidemic. The news media has been instrumental in educating and informing the public about HIV/AIDS. Critics have noted the minimal coverage of HIV/AIDS among African Americans in mainstream news in the face of the clear racial disparities. Media messages that do address the epidemic among African Americans typically emphasize the role of individual behavior, though much of the research suggests that the disparities are largely a product of structural determinants. This study examines the quantity and content of news coverage of HIV/AIDS over a fourteen-year period. Methods: The newspaper coverage of HIV/AIDS was drawn from 24 major U.S. newspapers and one wire service, content analyzed from 1993 to 2007. In total, more than 52,000 news stories related to HIV/AIDS were used to construct the national monthly fluctuations in news coverage. The explicit focus of the content analysis was to quantify which population sub-groups were identified as being at heightened risk for HIV infection. Results: The content analysis revealed several findings. Mainstream press coverage of HIV/AIDS declined significantly, with much of the remaining coverage shifting from a domestic to international focus. Conclusion: News coverage of the epidemic among African-Americans declined, even as the disease burden of HIV/AIDS shifted heavily to this group in the United States. When news stories did address the epidemic among African Americans, the stories typically highlighted prevalence statistics, without contextualizing the disparity.