Sexuality in Media: Emerging Issues in Africa - Africa Regional ...

Sexuality in the Media: Emerging Issues in Africa
related deaths in the richer countries.
Sub-Sahara Africa is by far the worst-affected in the world by the AIDS
epidemic. The region has just over 10% of the world's population, but is home to
over 60% of all people living with HIV. An estimated 3.1 million adults and
children became infected with HIV during the year 2004. This brought the total
number of people living with HIV/AIDS in the region to 25.4 million by the end
of the year ((UNAIDS/WHO 2004).
HIV infection rates in Kenya were low in the 1980s. However, by the end of
1998, almost 14% of Kenya's adult population was living with HIV, or about 2.1
million people (WHO/UNAIDS, 2002). However, according to the Kenya
Economic Survey for 2003 (GoK, 2003). HIV prevalence rates declined from
about 13% in 2000 to 10.2% in 2002. This is a tremendous decline, which is
attributed to vigorous advocacy campaigns against the disease by the
government and other organizations. In the recent past, Kenya has made great
efforts in educating people on HIV/AIDS especially since it was declared a
national disaster in 1999. The media fraternity has also played a significant role
in HIV/AIDS campaigns both through featuring articles and other information
related to HIV/AIDS and also supporting government and communities
financially and materially as part of their corporate social responsibility.
Table 2: Coverage of HIV in Selected Print Media
Newspaper/Magazine
Jan. Feb.
Monthly articles
March April May June Total %
The East African Standard
The Daily Nation
The People
The Kenya Times
The Parents Magazine
The Insyder Magazine
Total
17 13 29 30 10 13 112 23
26 44 57 12 26 31 196 40
9 11 17 8 24 19 88 18
15 19 11 15 19 9 79 16
1 2 1 1 1 6 1
3 - 7 10 2
71 89 115 66 78 72 491 100
Coverage Of Sexuality Issues in the Print Media in Kenya
Issues covered by the selected newspapers and magazines totaled 491 during
the entire study period. As is the case with coverage of sexuality and sexuality
education issues, the Daily Nation had the highest number of articles on
HIIVAIDS (196), followed by The Standard (112), The People (88), Kenya
Times, (79) The Insyder (10) and Parents Magazine (12). Generally, it seems
that during the first half of 2004, HIV/AIDS was given the highest coverage by
all the media. Out of 110 articles on HIV/AIDS carried by The East African
Standard newspaper, 19 (17%) were related to the fight against the scourge
while HIV testing and ARVs had 7 (6.3%) articles each. Other aspects included
AIDS education, magnitude of problem and AIDS organizations, each with six
articles.
In The People Daily, 26 (29.5%) of the articles were on the strategy to fight the
scourge while 21 (23.8%) others were on its prevalence. HIV/AIDS education
had 15 (17.0%) articles, AIDS organization 8 (9.1%), church and AIDS 7
(7.9%), AIDS orphans and Anti-Retroviral 5 (ARVs) (5.6%), AIDS
discrimination 3 (3.4%) and Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) had 2
(2.2%) with the rest accounting for 1.5%.
Unlike sexuality and sexuality education coverage, there seems to have been a
fairer distribution of HIV related issues in all months since all print media
selected covered at least some aspect of HIV/AIDS in a month. The People and
Kenya Times, which had very few articles on sexuality education seemed to
have given a lot of prominence to coverage of HIV. The People had 88 articles
on AIDS, which accounts for 50% of all sexuality and related issues reported
during the period under investigation.
The Insyder magazine had more HIV/AIDS articles than sexuality education.
This is probably because it targets the youth, and teenagers who are more
vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and teenage pregnancy. This is due to their apparent
risky sexual behaviour.
The findings show that HIV/AIDS received the highest coverage and this goes
to show the commitment of media houses in the fight against the scourge. Other
than social responsibility, many civil society organizations pay for coverage of
HIV/AIDS and related news as part of their public education strategy in order to
reach the wide readership of these newspapers and magazines. It is important to