The local newspaper in St. Louis is, “The St. Louis Post Dispatch.” Although the AIDS epidemic is a major issue in St. Louis, the newspaper does not have many articles about the epidemic. After reading through the archives for this newspaper, I found a few recent articles pertaining to AIDS. The first article is titled, “Silence about AIDS is detrimental to black,” by Sylvester Brown. The article is about how the AIDS epidemic still goes invisible to the black community. It also discusses how the voice of the black community is silenced and not really open to AIDS. It is located in the Metro Section on page B1 and printed on February 8, 2007. Personally, I feel that since this is such a great issue, especially in the black community that it should have been on the front page. Not many people open up the newspaper, flip to the Metro section and actually open it up. With the importance of this issue, it should have been on the front page, A1, in the main news section. The second article is titled, “Cord blood holds potential to save many lives,” by Bob Wilmott. This article encourages parents to bank their cord blood stem cells because of the likelihood of children producing their own is decreasing. The article discusses how these cord blood stem cells could be used to develop a vaccine for AIDS. The author fails to elaborate on this idea of a potential vaccine, making this the only point that the word AIDS is mentioned in the article. It is located in the Healthy and Fit section on page H7 and printed on January 15, 2007. The final article was printed on World AIDS Day, December 1, 2006. The article, “Efforts against AIDS turn focus to prevention,” written by Maria Cheng of the Associated Press for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. This article discusses AIDS prevention methods, some that I’ve never heard of such as circumcision and microbicides. It also identifies AIDS as a pandemic, which I rarely see. This article was located in the news section on page A2. I find it very peculiar that this article was not on the front-page, due to the fact that it was World AIDS Day. The only other article for World AIDS Day, offered updates on conferences going on in St. Louis supporting World AIDS Day. It was located in the Metro Section on page C2. The entire newspaper, or at least the front page, should have been dedicated to AIDS on World AIDS Day (2).

The media seems to be trying to hide AIDS from the public. AIDS seems to be a very touchy subject for the St. Louis region where the AIDS rate per 100,000 is 411 (Refer to table 1). I rarely hear about death of AIDS victims as I watch the news. I never hear about what the CDC or other organizations are doing about AIDS. The only time that AIDS is evident in the community is when there is an AIDS walk or it is World AIDS Day. Recently I heard of National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, which was on February 7, 2007. I never knew that this existed because I have never heard anything about it. Yes, the AIDS epidemic is a major issue in the black community, and perhaps that is why this day exists, but no one knows about it to celebrate it. The only article in the newspaper about this was located in the on page B2 and talked about how no one knows about the day and how AIDS in taboo in the black community. If the media does not address the issue, then many people will not know of it. Before doing this research, I never noticed how much the media ignores the AIDS epidemic. My initial guesses of the AIDS numbers in my community were not influenced by the media because I do not see much about the AIDS epidemic in the media. My initial guesses were influenced by my prior knowledge from biology class and guest speakers only, which I see as a problem because the AIDS epidemic is increasingly becoming an issue worldwide.

I have been exposed to campaigns about the severity of the AIDS epidemic in one aspect of the media, magazines and posters. I have seen magazine AIDS with celebrities who are advocates against the disease. Celebrities such as Mary J. Blige and Bono, have done a lot to present the issues to the world, particularly the highly influenced adolescents, through magazine ads, such as the Gap’s “Red” campaign against AIDS. There are many programs such as the St. Louis AIDS Foundation that sponsor events and post information, through posters and billboards,  about the AIDS epidemic. I have also seen AIDS articles or campaigns while surfing the internet on sites such as stltoday, msn and yahoo. I usually do not read them because they do not spark my interest. My logic is, since it does not affect me, then why should I care. However, I am realizing that this is the wrong attitude to have towards this disease.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/postphotos/orb/style/2006-11-03/6.htm and http://www.prohiphop.com/fashion/index.html

AIDS Campaigns featured in magazines and newspapers.

One of the most prominent is the Gap's Red Campaign - http://www.gapinc.com/red/