Local press accused of dramatizing AIDS stories

JAKARTA (JP): The local mass media tends to sensationalize reports on cases of AIDS, giving the public the wrong perception about the disorder, a senior journalist said yesterday.

Agnes Aristiarini, a science, technology and health editor at the Kompas daily, said that the personal lives of those infected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) which causes the deadly Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), are treated as analogous to those of criminals.

"All of this unnecessarily aggravates fear of the disease instead of improving the awareness of the need to combat myths about the disease," she told the 500 participants of a one-day "AIDS Update" symposium held by the Indonesian AIDS society.

Agnes cited the 1994 controversy over the government's banning of American basketball star Magic Johnson simply because he had tested HIV positive.

Yesterday's symposium was part of efforts to disseminate the results of the July International AIDS Congress held in Vancouver, Canada. It was reported at that congress that 21 million people have tested HIV positive and six million people have developed AIDS worldwide.

The latest government figures put the number of HIV/AIDS cases in Indonesia at 438. The World Health Organization, however, has said that about 50,000 Indonesians might be infected with HIV.

Experts say that a major obstacle to detecting and preventing the disorder is public ignorance of the ways the virus can be transmitted.

Agnes challenged the mass media to set a trend and to prepare society to be better informed on issues related to HIV and AIDS by making more proportional reports.

"After all, our society has no power to reject the HIV or AIDS. It must accept them as a reality facing the global community, as well as our own society," Agnes said, adding that there is no cure for the syndrome yet.

HIV is transmitted mainly through the exchange of bodily fluids. (14)