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What does the Media say... Local and National? |
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In my life outside of school I find myself being constantly bombarded with AIDS awareness. One of my favorite networks is Black Entertainment Television (BET) and they started a “Rap It Up" campaign a few years ago. It has done a commendable job at raising awareness about the issue, especially pertaining to the Black community. When BET first started the campaign they would just have commercials with actors saying “rap it up” as a backdrop with pictures of condoms waved behind them. Now they have celebrates saying the slogan and important facts about the virus. Just this year they revamped the way they discussed the problem so that we, meaning the audience, could put a face to the disease. Actual AIDS patients are shown talking about how they contracted the disease and the ordinary things that you would expect to present in a commercial such as that. BET now has the patients talk about the social ramifications of them being infected. One woman said how she was supposed to be the god-mother of her friend’s newborn, until she told the pregnant friend that she had AIDS. The woman talked about how she and her friend were in the same situation, except that one got pregnant and the other became HIV positive. I am not sure if I agree with this statement; actually I find it a little extreme, but it does make me think. Looking at fairly current information from my local newspaper I noticed that they were very good at shifting the problem away from home. There were major articles talking about how a price reduction in AIDS medication would greatly help the Africans who have the disease because it is hard for them to pay for the drugs currently. When AIDS was discussed locally it was done in a way that separated one group from the greater population of the Hudson Valley. This target population, of no surprise of mine, is that of African Americans. There was one article in particular that captured my attention. It was published in June of 2001. The opening sentence is, “The deadly disease is spreading, especially in the black community.” The entire article seemed preoccupied with pointing the finger at the African American race to really alert the public of the disease. There were medical facts stated but they were so very deeply buried under the blame placing that the information became hard to ingest. I suppose the writing style affected me more than the majority of their readers because I happened to be a member of the race in question. After compiling all of my numbers it is clear that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. The Black population of Orange County is being hit harder than any other group. It is also safe assumption to guess that it will not be spread to the other races very quickly because Orange county is still very racially segregated. My mother and I were the only Black people in my neighborhood for the first 10 years of us living there until last mother when a biracial couple moved in next door |