Below is an article from The Body. The table of contents leads to additional articles on stigma that are great reading. It's really awesome to see such a movement on an issue this big finally happening. This is going to lead to great things if we keep on it! ~Damon @HIVTruth
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Here Are 5 Ways the Media Can Stand Up to HIV Stigma
June 17, 2015
Mainstream reporting on issues concerning HIV is often sensationalized and stigmatizing, sometimes doing more harm than good. In fact, warned Josh Barro last year on MSNBC: "Negative attitudes about HIV are literally killing people." Within the HIV community, this is widely known and well documented: Stigma fuels the HIV epidemic by creating barriers to HIV testing and care access, and by placing people with HIV at risk for discrimination and violence.
But the responsibility for addressing and ending HIV stigma cannot rest on people living with HIV alone. Makers of mainstream media have a responsibility to stop using language that labels and "others" people with HIV and communities at risk for HIV. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 62 percent of people in the US get their HIV information mainly from media. By becoming informed about the realities of living with HIV and incorporating these facts and stories into their reporting, media makers can also be some of our greatest allies in improving lives and upholding rights for people with HIV.
So, in the spirit of allyship -- and helping media makers satisfy their professional responsibility to seek and report truth, Positive Women's Network-USA (PWN-USA), a national membership body of women living with HIV, offers this primer for media makers to start today -- right now! -- to become allies in eliminating HIV stigma, one article and one report at a time.
To read each section of the statement as a separate article, click on the numbered section heading titles. For more information about this report, contact Olivia Ford at oford@pwn-usa.org.
Special thanks and deep gratitude to all the insightful PWN-USA members who acted as co-authors and contributors to this statement: Valerie Wojciechowicz, Venita Ray, Naimah Oneal, Susan Mull, Asha Molock, Vickie Lynn, Tommy Luckett, Vanessa Johnson, Olga Irwin, Tami Haught and Barb Cardell.
Table of Contents
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