AIDS TREATMENT NEWS Issue #208
John S. James
First, the tone and content of most U.S. media coverage of this conference was largely determined by one newspaper, The New York Times. This is because the Times has, for years, been extremely successful in selling its stories to other newspapers. And since the vast majority of U.S. media outlets that ran Yokohama stories did not send anyone there, they generally re-ran portions of the Times coverage. (Other nationally-circulated newspapers, including the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal, also covered the AIDS conference. But The New York Times is reprinted more widely.)
The New York Times did not send its usual AIDS or medical writers to Yokohama. Instead it sent a reporter who usually covers Japan and Korea -- writing about computers, automobiles, nuclear and other technologies, corporate finance and other business news, and current political issues. His articles from Yokohama are what one would expect from a competent general reporter; the problem is that this large and complex a conference is very difficult to cover in depth. A reporter not familiar with the subject basically seeks out authority or other figures, and finds something to talk with them about -- which could be done any time by telephone, no conference needed. The thousands of other presentations at the meeting might as well not have happened, as far as most of the U.S. public is concerned, since this one reporter largely wrote what the U.S. read.
We don't know why The New York Times did not send one of its usual AIDS reporters, who could have included more depth and different perspectives. The savings in airfare and lodging costs (since the person they did send already works in the region) is one possibility.
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