Spotlight
AIDS: Hiding in Plain Sight
How Lurid Reports Obscure the Bigger Story
Bob’s story was certainly compelling. The New York Times found him “prowling” for sex in a Manhattan bathhouse, high on “a wildly addictive stimulant” even as he spoke with the reporter. The sentiment of most of the men in the bathhouse was that, as one of them said, “rubbers are a killjoy.” None cared about the threat of AIDS, and all were hopped up on crystal meth — a drug the story’s headline described as THE BEAST IN THE BATHHOUSE.
The article was but one in a recent spate of shocking tales about how the nexus of drugs and sex has led too many gay men to ignore the danger of HIV. It’s gripping stuff, and it’s this year’s hot AIDS story in the U.S.
Too bad it’s such a distortion of reality. Crystal meth use is indeed spreading among well-heeled, largely white, urban gay men. And HIV is certainly on the rise among gay men as well — new infections shot up 17 percent between 1999 and 2002. The problem is that that increase is driven by infections among low- and middle-income African Americans. And those infections have little to do with “sex marathons.” To the contrary, they’re most likely the result of serial monogamy within small social circles where HIV is already present.
That’s a far less eye-popping tale, and one we have seen woefully little coverage of. Nor have we seen much coverage of the fact that the epidemic is aging — 44 percent of new HIV diagnoses in New York City each year are among people over forty — because of growing infections among middle-aged blacks who aren’t using condoms with their partners. No beasts, no bathhouses, just the small but crucial miscalculations that add up to today’s still growing AIDS epidemic.
All reporters love a good lead. From drugs to crime to poverty, we cover America’s social concerns with a dose of perception-skewing hype. An ambitious study recently released by the Kaiser Family Foundation makes this clear. The study illustrates how, from the beginning, the AIDS story has been driven by a series of big, attention-grabbing events. In the early years, it was the effect on the blood supply and debate over San Francisco bathhouses being shut down. Next came the public infections of Rock Hudson and Magic Johnson, followed by a pair of very large events, the discovery of the drugs that have staved off death for so many people, and, finally, by the AIDS devastation in Africa.
The Kaiser study didn’t analyze how much the hot story of the time colored how life with HIV was depicted. But it offered a disturbing hint at what this approach misses: overall, only 3 percent of stories focused on U.S. minorities. African Americans account for half of all new infections every year, but they have rarely been involved in the epidemic’s high drama.
Even when blacks have entered the frame, the picture has remained out of focus. A recent hot story was about black men “on the down low” — guys who consider themselves straight, and live as such, but maintain homosexual relationships on the side. For most publications, those pieces offered a rare focus on black gay men. Yet, just before the down-low infatuation emerged, a high-profile study estimated that a third of twentysomething black gay and bisexual men are infected with HIV. Beyond the initial news reports, journalists have shown little interest in these largely out-of-the-closet (and thus boring?) people whose primary risk is unprotected sex inside a relationship with someone they’ve trusted too quickly.
To be fair, the quest for a dramatic story angle goes beyond journalism. Many of those leading in the fight against HIV insist on framing it as an emergency rather than a lasting concern. That means creating a sense of urgency — something best done by focusing on hyperbolic scenarios.
In its laudable effort to get the epidemic onto the front page, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focuses journalists on attention-getting theories. The down-low hysteria began when the CDC started pushing studies that speculated that such men form an “HIV bridge” to straight black women. The crystal meth hype is now being driven by the CDC’s effort to understand what it’s calling an “HIV-prevention fatigue” among young gay men.
The result is a myopic understanding of this epidemic. We see white where there’s actually black. We see drug-induced orgies where there are really complex sexual choices complicated by the search for intimacy. And we see something that demands our attention for just a few fleeting, hysterical moments when we’re actually facing a systemic, decades-long problem.
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