Notes for the Next Epidemic, Part One: Lessons from News Coverage of AIDS

Abstract

It is just this latter type of criticism of press practices that is explicitly described, and so well embodied, in this analysis of AIDS coverage prepared by Timothy Cook, Associate Professor of Political Science at Williams College and in 1989-90 a Research Fellow of the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy and Visiting Associate Professor in the Lombard Chair at the fohn F. Kennedy School of Government. In this first of two of Tim's papers to be published by the Center, he draws the distinction described above far better than I have here, and then goes on to evaluate press coverage of AIDS by arguing that a large number of existing press practices and standards, even when followed faithfully, have the tendency to produce unfortunate press coverage of events like AIDS that may disproportionately place at risk only a small portion of the population, that may not be easily captured in daily breaking events/ that may present an extraordinarily high possibility of inflammatory interpretation, and that may involve areas of scientific knowledge not easily understood or conveyed by those without the requisite scientific knowledge. Tim's provocative critique of AIDS coverage would be important even if its lesson were restricted to the enormously pressing issue of AIDS itself. But as a case study in how journalistic norms and practices may systematically misreport social phenomena of a certain kind, it has an even broader message, one that should be considered by all serious students of the press and its performance.