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

Sexuality in the Media: Emerging Issues in Africa
In concluding this section, we summarize coverage of sexuality issues by
newspaper/magazine during the first six months of 2004.
Overall, there were 1725 articles carried by the selected newspapers and
magazines out of which 489 (28%) were on HIV/AIDS, 412 (24%) on sexuality
and sexuality education, 359 (21%) on reproductive health and rights, sexual
violence 311 (18%), sexual orientation and identity 103 (6%) while child
marriage constituted 59 (3%) articles.
Table 7 shows that generally, during the period under study HIV/AIDS was
given the highest coverage with 489 (28%) articles, which translates to around
81 articles every month or 3 articles every day. On the other hand, child
marriage trailed the rest of sexuality issues with 59 (3%) articles. The
Daily/Sunday Nation led with a record 994 articles on sexuality over the sixmonth
period. The East African Standard with 324, and Kenya Times and The
People Daily almost tallying at 177 and 176 respectively.
All except The Daily Nation seemed to have given more prominence to
HIV/AIDS than other sexuality issues although The Daily Nation led in terms
of number of articles placed in the newspapers pages over the study period.
The Daily Nation reported more on sexuality education issues than other
sexuality issues under investigation.
From the foregoing, we observe that the media in Kenya is playing a key role in
the campaign against HIV/AIDS. This is a step in the right direction given the
toll the scourge is taking on the people of Kenya in particular and world in
general. This is likely to pay dividends by way of highlighting the gravity of the
scourge and leading to behavior change particularly among the most vulnerable
groups including the poor and the youth. Current statistics indicate that
HIV/AIDS prevalence had decreased from 13% in 1998 to around 6% in 2003
(GoK, 2003). We cannot, therefore, underemphasize the role played by the
media in bringing down the prevalence rates.
Positioning of Sexuality Issues in Newspapers/
Magazines
The position of any article in newspaper pages is a critical factor in
determining the importance of the article to the owners of the media in terms of
the readership targeted. That is, the number of readers it will attract and
consequently the amount of revenue it will attract. Over and above, it is
important to note that media houses are about news and money (business).
Therefore, positioning and space allocated for any articles is seen as a function
of the value of the story.
Articles placed as news or features in the front pages of the papers implies that
the issue is of some value to the media house and will receive wide readership
rather than short articles that are placed in the middle pages amidst a number of
other articles. This makes it difficult to even find them and implies that they are
not topmost on the agenda of the media.
This section presents findings on the positioning of articles in the print media.
Similar data for the Nation newspapers is not available.
The East African Standard
The East African Standard seemed to have treated a majority of the sexuality
issues as news 153 (47%) articles and features 224 (69%) of all the 324 articles
covered during the study period. HIV/AIDS received widest coverage with
about 19% of all articles in the main news pages. Nonetheless, there were a few
other articles in the letters and commentary sections as shown in the table below.
Sexuality issues
Sexuality and sexual
education
HIV/AIDS
Reproductive health
and rights
Sexual orientation and
identity
Sexual violence
Total
Coverage Of Sexuality Issues in the Print Media in Kenya
Table 8: Positioning of sexuality issues in the East African Standard,
February-June 2004*
News Feature Letter Advertisement Commentary
10 25 8 0
0
63 14 6 2
2
14 6 4 0
4
4 9 1 0
0
51 9 3 0 0
Child marriage 11 8 0
0 0
153 224 22 2
6
*January data not available
This implies that only a few people were responding to sexuality issues in form
of letters and commentaries.