Poster Session: Collaboration With The Media - A Success Story

The Fourth ICAAP was held in the Philippines in 1996. Before, during and shortly afterwards the media paid considerable attention to the subject of HIV/AIDS. Then interest began to wane and the AIDS Society of the Philippines pondered how they might continue the good work of information dissemination, which had been possible during ICAAP. They consulted with some of the media who had shown an interest during the conference, and based on the advice they received did several things: They established an AIDS media award, which has the effect of engaging the media in producing quality material containing accurate and educational material; They developed a pilot project - launched in 1999 - in collaboration with journalists to help overcome the main obstacles to accurate media reporting; They "paired" journalists with medical practitioners so that joint material can be produced. During the pilot project, which lasted eight months, a range of items in print, radio and TV were generated which would not otherwise have emerged. As a result the project was extended for two more years. In this time, a careful record of media stories of all kinds has been kept. It is an impressive tally, including several full-length feature radio and TV stories. Estimates are that a similar volume of paid advertising copy would have cost several million US dollars. The entire budget of this collaboration was in fact USD 50,000. One of the features of Philippine society, which may well be of vital importance to the success of this collaboration is the existence of a vigorous and free press, and the willingness of the organisers to give recognition to journalists for their efforts in presenting accurate, non-sensational, informative material.