IT WAS late at night after a long day, so the President needed someone to take a second look at his weekly internet letter.
He handed it to an adviser, who read it through. “Mind if I cut it back a little bit?” the adviser asked. “This miniskirt metaphor is a bit overdone.”
“I rather […]

EVERY now and then there is a story tucked between Paris Hilton and Jake White that cuts through all the nonsense and leaves one thinking: “This is why we practise journalism. This is why it is important. This is what it is all about.”
One such story was the exposé in East London’s Daily Dispatch […]

South African Deputy Minister of Health Nozizwe Madlala Routledge was dismissed from her post on the eve of National Women’s Day. At an HIV/AIDS and the Media Project forum held in March this year, Madlala-Routledge engaged in conversation with journalists and editors about media coverage of HIV/AIDS. She said, “In the health budget vote debate […]

Over a period of five consecutive days (Tuesday 17 th July to Saturday 21 st July) I looked through the mainstream daily The Star for articles about HIV and AIDS. There is a large pile of newspapers lying on the floor next to me – these are sections of The Star that contained […]

The commodification of poverty is becoming more fashionable by the hour. For instance, a new restaurant in Greenside, a trendy suburb near Johannesburg ’s CBD, allows its patrons to enjoy their dining experience as if they were in a shack. Not that there’s anything wrong with shacks themselves – many South Africans live in them […]

The National Arts Festival in Grahamstown took place between the 28 th of June and the 6 th of July and provided both established and green artists alike a forum to showcase their art. Visual and performance art have been important in making HIV/AIDS visible and allow for an engagement with the complex issues that […]

AIDS denialism is not a new phenomenon by any means. It has been around since the epidemic began virus popped up in the 1980s. One would think that in the face of the overwhelming scientific evidence, denialists might have quietened down over time, but that is far from the case.
However, denial is not an unusual […]

The media has missed an opportunity to report on and expose working conditions in the public health care sector in their coverage of the large-scale public sector strike.
In their latest newsletter the Treatment Action Campaign draw attention to how the media has focused on the actions of striking workers but have not examined the […]

South African comedian David Kau has a column in the June 10 th edition of the new daily newspaper The Times. His article "Double-ply condoms for higher grades" is disturbing – and not just because it isn’t funny.
Kau suggests that a solution for the high numbers of pregnancies among teenage girls in South Africa […]

Recently there has been a focus on a preaching approach to tackling the spread of HIV/AIDS. There has also been a significant amount of criticism around this approach. The ‘ABC’ campaign has failed to produce any significant results, despite its being foregrounded as the preferred approach to curb the spread of HIV/AIDS. Even the […]