From Philippine Journalism Review, April 2002, pages 35-37.

Between Sensationalism and Censure
By Diana G. Mendoza

THE MEMORY of the young woman named Sarah Jane Salazar, an AIDS educator, has not yet faded, especially for Filipino patrons of the news media in the latter half of the 1990s. Salazar entered public consciousness like a character in a soap opera, courtesy of the media that lionized her, but which also gave the public irrational thrills, and not a little fear.

After Salazar's death of complications from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), the media, in what seemed to be their last shot before parting with her, revealed her real name and those of her two children. She was already dead anyway some reporters argued.

Life for the media has never been the same main. No other Sarah Jane has popped up to give the media something as juicy and as suggestively dangerous her story was since.

A movie was made on Sarah Jane's life. But if a movie were to be made out of her affair with the media, it is valid to wonder what it w would be like.

It would be appropriate to burrow the assessment of Dr. Michael Tan, Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist and University of the Philippines professor of anthropology, of Aids Journalism in the Philippines, and how movies are made.

Tan was one of four speakers in a satellite forum organized by the AIDS Society of the Philippines, a non-government organization, and the Rockefeller Foundation, an international donor agency, during the Sixth International congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific held in Melbourne, Australia a from October 5?10, 2001.

The forum, titled, "Media and Sexuality: Between Sensationalism and Censure," attracted the biggest number of delegates among the parallel forums held during the international gathering.

Commenting if the Philippines could be at the forefront of education on sex and sexuality Tan said no, because "media have very sensational coverage but they still have this patina of moralism which is strange." He said this brims over to the film industry that churns out movies carrying the "crime and punishment" theme -- for instance, movies with pots of adultery that run steamy sex scenes but which towards the end, mandate that the adulterer, who is always the female, gets shot or imprisoned.

"With these endings, movies become a morality play after two hours of titillation," he said.

The same interpretation can be applied to the coverage by the media of Salazar. It helped perhaps, that before she became a government AIDS educator, she was a sex worker, which in the minds of many media practitioners justified her negative portrayal? without giving much thought to the fact that this kind of treatment was undermining the education campaign against AIDS.

Tan said Filipino movies also carry the "crime and redemption" theme, in which a sex worker eventually realizes there is a better life outside prostitution, but only after the audience ha: been treated to several sexual episodes. Both the "crime and punishment" and "crime and redemption" movie theme, said Tan, also characterize news coverage by Philippine media. Tan added that tabloid fare was much more evidently "crime and cleavage coverage" because of the lewd photos and suggestive headlines and news stories these publications favored.

In his presentation, Tan said the Philippine media were instrumental in ousting a president widely perceived as corrupt, and of ousting a dictator -- proofs that media are potent agents of social change.

The demonstrate capacity of the Philippine media to help effect such changes, however, is only one aspect of a complicated media situation. Since the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, he said sex has all the more been sensationalized and stigmatized by the same mass media. This has always been the case in the Philippine media. "What is criminal is sex and any form of sexuality becomes potentially criminal. AIDS has reconfigured these themes even into the news coverage."

It has been 17 years since the first AIDS case was reported in 1981, but the news stories have not changed and the images depicted by the media continue to reverberate with moralism, he said. Prostituted men and women, when found infected with the virus, become AIDS fugitives monitored and hunted by the police. Homosexual men still bear the burden of being blamed for the increase in AIDS virus transmission. The sexual activities of these two sectors are called "deviant sex," to the point that sexually active people are automatically branded as at risk. In less serious tabloids and magazines, however, photos of naked men and women are laid out beside the news stories of scandal and intrigue.

The worst of last year's reference to AIDS was a news story that appeared in several papers about a member of the bandit group Abu Sayyaf having contracted the virus after sexually assaulting a foreign hostage. The story turned out to be false and was only a psy-war tactic of the military.

News stories like these take out the whole context of AIDS education that advocates prevention, said Tan. The public is flooded with materials that are very sexual, but misconceptions about AIDS still circulate, often causing a mix of messages that even become fodder for political commentary. If this kind of sensationalism continues, said Tan, sex and sexuality will remain stigmatized, and increase the reproductive health risks of the people of the Philippines.

After weighing statistical probabilities with behavioral data, health authorities have concluded that there is a "low and slow" HIV transmission in the Philippines, but Filipinos in their prime -- males aged 30 to 39 and females aged 20 to 29 -- account for the majority of infected people.

Health experts say the number of new infections is increasing gradually, but it is only a matter of time before the silent epidemic explodes, because of many factors, among them increasing population mobility, sexual conservatism that obstructs knowledge of sex and sexuality, widespread commercial and casual sex compounded by low and incorrect use of condoms, crude sexual practices such as the use of penile "enhancers" like bolitas gender inequity, and weaknesses in the government information campaign.

The Philippines, which sends anywhere from between five and 12 million Filipinos to work overseas, has to watch out for the spread of the virus from workers to their families. A quarter of the reported infections have been discovered among returning overseas workers.

The Philippine media as viewed by Tan has parallelisms with the media of Thailand, in the sense of their being free. Besides the Philippines and Thailand, two other countries perceived to be in an opposite situation -- Vietnam and China --because of their media systems struggling to break from government control and religious and cultural conservatism, were also featured in the satellite forum.

Ruj Komonbut a journalism professor of Thammasat University in Bangkok, said Thailand has a tremendous number of media outlets to serve the public, but the country is still reeling from the most severe HIV/AIDS epidemic in Asia.

Although the majority of Thai adults anti young people know about the disease and its mode of transmission, 70 new infections are nevertheless occurring per day. Of the 60 million population of Thailand, one million people are HIV-positive; more than 80 percent infected through sexual intercourse

Citing studies of the Bangkok Positive Project, Komonbut said the Thai media have a narrow view of sexuality ? sex organs, sexual acts, and sexual arousal? and this has damaging results.

He said gender bias is strong. The media say sex is indecent and it should not be discussed openly, and that good women do not talk about sex. Married men use condoms during contact with sex workers, but they do not use it when having intercourse with their wives. While more and more Thais are entering into unconventional sexual relationships, the media acknowledge this sexual behavior but do not discuss its impact on society. The dilemma is compounded by the media's putting a high value on virginity.

From Vietnam, Trinh Thanh Thuy international news editor of the Vietnam News in Hanoi, told the satellite forum the Vietnamese media are beginning to break taboos on people's most private concerns.

The taboos were greatly influenced by many years under the influence of Confucianism that prohibited sex as a subject of public discourse.

But the government, which controls media, has seen this tradition as an obstacle to reduce the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, as well as the country's high birth rate, so it began providing education, especially targeting young people with limited knowledge on reproductive health.

The result, however, has not been as well as expected. While some newspapers, magazines and journals have taken the more professional approach of offering expert advice, there are those that feature stories written or reported in explicit and voyeuristic detail, perhaps driven by the competitive media market.

She said some journalists and media entities have been reprimanded for violating the country's press laws, but the government is worried about the measure's lack of clear?cut distinctions on what reports are acceptable or not.

For its part, China, home to one?fifth of the world's population, is experiencing the biggest challenge in the AIDS epidemic since it opened itself to the world. Dr. Li Yinhe, a sociology professor of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, said changes in sexual behavior have led to the increase in sexually transmitted infections.

She said the health ministry estimates a total of 600,000 HIV?infected people, and this can balloon to 10 million by 2010 if efficient control measures are not put in place.

The government's fear is real, she said, because even if sexual behavior has indeed changed, the media are forbidden to discuss sex, sexuality and reproductive health, which means that they cannot do their jobs of informing people.

Homosexuality is also taboo, although the professor, who has authored many books on the life of homosexuals in China, said there are many homosexuals coming out and trying to live the lives they want, but nevertheless remain isolated from the rest of society. Prostitution has also risen to an alarming magnitude, and premarital sex has begun to be widely accepted among young people.

The forum showed that there are many factors that conspire to make AIDS journalism veer dangerously towards either censorship or sensationalism. It is because the disease is widely associated with sex, which, when exposed by media, pushes alarm, buttons in the minds of people. This might explain, too, the huge attendance of delegates to the forum.
Media in the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and China work under different circumstances, but they will continue to attempt to grab the attention of people through the sensational headline or first paragraph, in the process often forgoing a more sensitive language or approach.

While delegates to the conference asked journalists in Vietnam and China to fightgovernment repression, they also asked for more mature reporting in the midst of a tree press in Thailand and the Philippines.

Dr. Yinhe of China said any attempt to conceal facts would be impractical and foolish approach for a country on the brink of an epidemic. She cited the Chinese government's repression of information about the case of widespread HIV?infection among blood donors and recipients in Yunnan province in China, even punishing journalists who reported the incident.

Komonbut of Thailand said the media must make society understand that sexuality is not about sex organs and sexual relationships but about respect for oneself and one's partner.

"If people have a receptive attitude towards sex and sexuality, they can clearly and comfortably talk to each other. If they know more, they will not have AIDS."

The Philippines' Dr. Tan said the AIDS Society of the Philippines has been working with journalists through workshops and providing guide booklets containing biornedically correct language, but media reporting still has along way to go.

"We need to bring up gender sexuality issues because that is what is preventing journalists from reporting fairly on HIV/AIDS." He stressed that it's very easy to get the technical stuff and remind people to be more caring, but any "AIDS 101" course or workshop may be inadequate if it does not go beyond the basics."

AIDS advocates must also do away with the old approach of presenting a person with AIDS as part of a "morality tale" by telling people this person got infected because of bad behavior that people must not emulate.

In the absence of a cure for AIDS, the media can contribute greatly in at least giving people information on prevention, but meeting that mandate is in much of Asia still problematic.

Diana G. Mendoza is a freelance journalist.

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