FIRST IMPRESSIONS

In view of the fact that newspapers are a direct source of what is happening both locally and globally and are one form of media that can easily influence our outlook on any topic, I researched two newspaper companies that are most read around both my neighborhood and Westchester County. These two newspaper companies are The New York Times, and The Daily News. Within these two newspapers I searched for articles that were published from 2006-2008 with the key words HIV and AIDS.

Within these two news papers I retrieved 29 articles from the New York Times relating in any way to the topic of AIDS, and 28 articles from the Daily News. From the 28 articles I found in the New York Times, the different categories that I found present in the articles were on the susceptibility of homosexuals to AIDS, the differences in race and their relationship to the AIDS rate, AIDS as a problem in Africa, Children and how to treat them, Treatments/Solutions for AIDS, Politics and Economy that influence the funding and awareness of AIDS, and raising awareness of AIDS to people. Often I found that these seven categories overlapped each other and were talked about in the same article.

Overall, I found that in the New York Times out of all these categories only four of the articles dealt with race as well as homosexuals, five were on AIDS in Africa, four involving children, nine about treatments and solutions, five on the economy (two of which were intertwined with politics), and finally eight articles dealt with awareness of AIDS.

Seven of the articles from the New York Times specifically dealt with women with AIDS whereas six articles specifically spoke of males with AIDS. Of these articles with women three of them were also directed to children and the transmission of mother to daughter/son. From the seven articles that spoke of males with AIDS five of them spoke of MSM homosexual transmission (one of them spoke of transmission through blood) and the remaining two articles spoke of solutions such as circumcision.