Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting

IWMF HIV/AIDS Investigative Reporting Fellowship

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Credits IWMF Executive Director IWMF director of programs: frayintermedia project manager: Writer: Sub-editing: Layout and design: Co-ordinator: Administrator:

Elisa Lees MuĂąoz Nadine Hoffman Paula Fray Stuart Graham Alex Ball Sally Dore Unathi Jobela Debby Kramer

Thank you to all the speakers, presenters and skills’ trainers who shared their expertise with the fellows as well as the mentors and media houses including: Mentors: Nalisha Adams, Max du Preez, Anton Harber, Fred Khumalo, Mia Malan, Harriet MacLea, Sue Grant Marshall, Peta Krost Maunder, Gcina Ntsaluba, Kevin Ritchie, Rob Rose, Sam Sole, Anso Thom, Beauregard Tromp.

Participating Media Houses: AgriConnect, Alex FM, Alex Pioneer, Channel Africa, City Press, Daily News, Daily Sun, e.tv, EyeWitness News, Focus SABC, IRIN/PLUS NEWS, Isolezwe, Mail & Guardian, Northern Cape Express, People Magazine, SABC Digital News, SABC Radio, SABC TV, Sowetan, The New Age, The Star, The Times, Weekend Argus.

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Foreword

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Zinhle Mapumulo

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Harriet MacLea

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Sipho Masombuka

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Ina Skosana

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Laura Lopez Gonzales

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Ramatamo Sehoai

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Bianca Capazorio

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Katharine Child

MULTIMEDIA 30

Nastasya Tay

TELEVISION 33

Euline Ellis

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Siphosethu Stuurman

RADIO REVIEW 41

Three Years of IWMF Fellowship

MENTORS 43

Mia Malan

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Gcina Ntsaluba

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Lessons Learned

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Biographies

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FOREWORD 2011-2013

New narratives about people living with HIV Elisa Lees Muñoz Executive Director International Women’s Media Foundation

“The narratives of over 100 investigative stories produced by the 30 IWMF Fellows epitomize the South African experience of HIV and AIDS.”

The story of HIV and AIDS in Africa has changed dramatically since the IWMF published its first media resource guide on the subject, “Reporting on HIV/AIDS”, in 2000. It is no longer a story about people dying of AIDS; rather, it is a story about people living with HIV. Tremendous medical advancements coupled with increased access to treatment give cause for celebration. Yet, millions in South Africa alone continue to be affected by the epidemic; it remains a monumental health problem.

In 2011, the International Women’s Media Foundation launched an investigative reporting fellowship programme to enhance HIV coverage in South Africa. Since the programme’s inception, 30 journalists representing an array of media houses, ranging from the SABC to community newspapers, have received advanced training, one-on-one mentoring from leading investigative journalists, and reporting stipends to produce innovative, in-depth HIV investigations.

This initiative follows more than a decade of work by the IWMF to enhance health reporting in sub-Saharan Africa, in particular on the complex issues surrounding HIV and AIDS. Beginning in 2000, the IWMF trained African journalists to report accurately and consistently on the epidemic. From 2002-2006, the IWMF’s Maisha Yetu (“Our Lives” in Swahili) project transformed health reporting in six African media houses in Botswana, Kenya and Senegal.

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

From 2002-2006, the IWMF’s Maisha Yetu (“Our Lives” in Swahili) project transformed health reporting in six African media houses in Botswana, Kenya and Senegal.

Reporting on HIV continues to be a vitally important endeavor in order to focus the public eye on and shape the response to the epidemic. Journalists need to find fresh angles that capture attention; and an ongoing campaign to keep awareness alive is paramount. In spite of the widespread perception of “AIDS fatigue” on the part of both editors and readers/viewers, untold stories abound, as the IWMF’s HIV reporting fellowship programme in South Africa revealed.

In the words of one health reporter, “We have only scraped the surface when it comes to telling HIV stories.”

To date more than 100 investigative stories have been produced by IWMF reporting fellows, exploring everything from the linkage between gender-based violence and the transmission of HIV, to the impact of stigma on teens navigating romantic relationships in a time of HIV, to advancements in medical male circumcision (MMC) to reduce the epidemic’s spread, to the role of culture in tackling the disease. Reading their narratives proves extraordinarily compelling and, at times, painful. Their work epitomizes the South African experience.

in Alexandra township and a special parliamentary hearing on preventing prison rape.

We thank the MAC AIDS Fund for the grants that allowed us to design and implement our HIV reporting fellowship programme in South Africa. We also thank Paula Fray of frayintermedia, who has managed the programme with skill and dedication from the beginning.

To the mentors who have guided IWMF reporting fellows through the process of producing top-notch HIV investigations, we are grateful for your important contribution in helping build their professional skills. To the partner media outlets and editors who have given IWMF reporting fellows the time to participate in this programme and the space for their investigations, we applaud you for your commitment to reporting on HIV in new ways, reflecting the changing narrative of the epidemic.

Finally, to the 30 journalists who have completed the programme, we commend you for taking the initiative and devoting yourselves over the course of a year to become HIV reporting experts. Your work continues to make a difference; thank you for playing a part in the ongoing fight to end HIV and AIDS.

This publication documents the experiences, challenges and best practices of journalists who participated in the IWMF’s HIV reporting fellowship. In interviews, they describe how they have identified new HIV stories to tell, pursued their investigations in the face of myriad obstacles, secured support from their editors, and engaged the public’s interest. They highlight the importance of seeking human narratives, including the need to tell women’s stories in their own voices, and of understanding the science of HIV to report on it in accurately, in terms that help the audience to understand.

Tangible outcomes of the reporting IWMF fellows have produced include the establishment of the first MMC clinic

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We have only scraped the surface

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Zinhle Mapumulo is an award-winning health reporter for the City Press newspaper. Previously, she spent more than six years working for The New Age and the Sowetan newspapers as a health reporter.

She won the Discovery Best Health News Reporting Award in 2009 and 2010. One of her stories for the fellowship, on male rape in Westville prison in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, resulted in a special hearing by a parliamentary committee.

Mapumulo had to travel across the country twice to meet a contact, who cancelled the meeting at the last minute. She did so despite deadlines and a tight budget.

Zinhle Mapumulo

Mapumulo suggests that journalists read medical research reports, build relations with research institutions such as the Medical Research Council and the Human Sciences Research Council, and read international stories on health to see what the latest trends in HIV reporting are. The notion of AIDS fatigue is a myth, she says. The public still has an enormous appetite for well-written stories about HIV.

Health Journalist City Press

“This notion of AIDS fatigue is just a myth.

People still want to read about HIV and AIDS.”

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What challenges did you face in collecting information for your story and how did you navigate through them?

Time and the budget were against me when I did my research. I had to return to KwaZulu-Natal twice because the person I was going to meet cancelled at the last minute. My editor was not happy with me being out of the newsroom most of the time to pursue this project. You need a network of reliable sources and must be prepared to read through research reports before embarking on a story. The backbone of health reporting is research and without it your story would not hold water.

Is it difficult to sell a story about HIV to an editor?

It depends where the story is and how scandalous it is. One thing I have noticed is that if it is scandalous, editors have no problem footing the bill, but even with that you need to do some serious persuasion. HIV is not as hot a story as it used to be back in 2005. Editors often ask what is new. They feel that we have told all there is to know about the epidemic.

One of my former editors once said the next time HIV made a front-page story in his paper would be when a cure was found. And that was around 2008. Health reporting is not taken seriously in our newsrooms. Preference is given to politics, corruption, sex and scandal.

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

If you were an editor what would you do to improve coverage, bearing in mind the lack of budget and space constraints?

Treat stories based on the issues that affect South Africans. For example HIV is a big issue in South Africa and any story relating to it should be given the space it deserves. This notion of AIDS fatigue is just a myth.

People still want read about HIV and AIDS.

If you were mentoring other reporters, what would you like to teach them?

Take time to read medical research reports, build relations with research institutions such as the Medical Research Council and the Human Sciences Research Council, as well as read international stories on health to see what the latest trends are.

Do you feel there are gaps in the coverage of HIV and health issues?

Yes, there are. Health issues are treated like the Cinderella of the newsroom. Even if your story makes it, the piece is buried somewhere in the back pages which people often don’t reach when reading newspapers.

The public often complain they are saturated with bad news and HIV stories. What can a writer do to get public reaction to HIV stories?

Most newspapers now have a system where stories are accompanied by the email address of the reporter so that helps with feedback and suggestions from readers. I get feedback all the time.

Do you feel the stories you wrote for the fellowship had an impact on your audience?

Yes, judging from the feedback I received from my colleagues and the public, they have made an impact.

Some people would even ask me to put them in contact with a doctor I had mentioned in my story or refer them to the research I have used in my story.

What are some of the important lessons you learned from the fellowship?

I learned that we have only scraped the surface when it comes to telling HIV stories. There are many interesting stories that haven’t been told. We need to find the means to tell them differently from the way they were told in 2005. The epidemic has evolved and people are more knowledgeable about it.

How important was understanding the science of HIV in identifying good stories?

Every health reporter must know the science of HIV if they want to produce good stories. Without knowing that HIV and AIDS are different, or knowing what incidence and prevalence mean, you cannot write balanced and accurate stories.

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Planning can improve coverage

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Harriet McLea

Harriet McLea was a health news reporter at The Times newspaper, a national daily, where she worked for more than two years. She studied politics, philosophy and economics at the University of Cape Town before obtaining an honours degree in journalism at Rhodes University in Grahamstown in 2008. While studying, McLea wrote for two university newspapers, The Oppidan Press and Varsity Newspaper, and read news at the University of Cape Town (UCT) Radio. For the fellowship McLea wrote the gripping story of a convicted rapist and his fear of contracting HIV. She also investigated a story about an HIV-positive pregnant woman and her anguish over whether she had passed on the virus to her unborn baby.

Some of her biggest challenges were gaining access to patients in hospitals and getting a budget to travel to the far corners of South Africa to investigate her stories.

Journalist The Times

How did you conceive and set up your stories?

I interviewed a convicted rapist who had served half his sentence and then been released on probation. I interviewed him at the Life After Prison offices in Thohoyandou.

“Getting the chance to interview consenting 18-yearolds who are HIV positive and to ask probing but respectful questions doesn’t happen often.”

I knew I wanted to cover Post-Exposure Prophylaxis and I knew about the benefits of it. I heard that many rape survivors don’t go to the clinic to get the pills because they are too scared to report the rape and this is sad because it means they are excluding themselves from treatment that prevents HIV. The motive was to use my stories to educate and inform, and ultimately I hoped that more women would go for treatment after being raped.

I saw a gap in the coverage of rape. I like to get all sides of a story and it felt important to speak both to a rapist and to a rape survivor to get their respective points of view. Expert opinions are those of people on the ground and I always like to hear from them. Of course that makes it harder, but it is always worth it.

I struggled to find a rape survivor because the only NGO (Thohoyandou Victim Empowerment Programme) working with rape survivors in the district was highly protective of their clients and simply refused to allow me speak to someone, despite many calls to explain how I would protect their identity and even interview the woman with the counsellor present.

I thought it would be even harder to find a man who would admit to rape and be willing to speak to me - anonymously. But in the end the NGO (Life After Prison) working with former convicts was so helpful and they found a man who was willing to speak about it, in the presence of the NGO coordinator. I wanted to ask him what he thought should he contract HIV if he raped a woman without protection or if he infected women with HIV when raping them.

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

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This was something very interesting to me as I had heard that almost all rapes are performed without the use of a condom.

What challenges did you face in collecting your information and how did you navigate them?

In a story from 2011 about the pregnant HIV positivewoman I found it very difficult to get permission from the department of health to be there for the birth. Our editor and especially the photo editor were adamant that we had to get a photo of the newborn baby. The poor photographer was denied access, despite many attempts to confirm. We spent hours sweet-talking clinic managers, only to be told by more senior health managers at the time of the birth that we were not allowed in the room. We had full support from the expectant mother. We built a wonderful relationship with her, but the department of health just didn’t understand what we were trying to convey in our report.

Did you find your subjects were open in talking about living with HIV? In Johannesburg I never experienced the stigma people used to speak of. In fact I found employers willing to employ HIV-positive staff. Strangers came to tell me they were HIV positive at a World AIDS Day event in Alexandra that I attended. They wanted to show how “strong” they were with their ARVs and how “fresh they looked”. They were so proud.

In rural Limpopo, it was okay for people to speak to me about it but I do not think it is often spoken about between locals and in homes. The stigma of being raped is still huge. I am not sure if that will ever change in the way the stigma of being HIV positive has changed in the cities.

Did you find a lack of appetite from the public and from editors about HIV stories?

The editor in Limpopo was so keen for a whole “AIDS supplement” for World AIDS Day. He wanted it to be eight pages. It was wonderful to work for a person like that at a community newspaper that usually deals with local news like cattle auctions, power cuts and potholes. The editor at The Times was equally keen for HIV stories throughout the year. I really, really appreciated that. She really gave lots of space.

Do you feel that the lack of a newsroom budget is constraining reporters in finding stories about HIV? Yes, I think the fact is that when there are fewer journos to cover the news of the day, the “long-term” stories that require more time to “be out in the field” and “not deliver” are often shelved in favour of the “I need it

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now” stories that must be covered and submitted at the end of the day for the next day’s newspaper. I believe most health stories are about people and the budget is mainly spent on getting to the people (if it’s remote then the budget goes up). I chose stories where I could easily gain access to people.

If you were an editor what would you do to improve coverage, bearing in mind the lack of budget and space constraints?

I respect anyone who takes the job as editor. There is the constant need to decide between what’s critical and what isn’t and who should be covering what story each day.

I think that pre-planning and working well with a dedicated team of journos can make a huge difference to improving coverage. Last-minute decisions about who covers what story often leads to inefficient use of reporters who might rather be elsewhere working on what they think could be a prize-winning story.

Giving them the time to pursue those stories is crucial.

Editors could do well to properly listen to pitches and weigh up the novelty factor of some stories which may at first appear not to carry much weight or sound that interesting.

I had a terrible experience (not an IWMF story) where I worked on a world-first breaking news story which ended up on page two of the newspaper. The story was picked up by other media (including international press, magazines and TV programmes like Special Assignment).

A TV programme featured the story three months after I broke it. The team that produced the content for the show ended up winning a health journalism prize for their work. That is a sore point for me.

Editors need to listen to their journos. The story should have been on page one but the editors just didn’t see it that way.

Were you constrained by space?

I think all journos want more of their copy in the paper.

In one case my story was cut down due to a decision to include a picture of Helen Zille on the same page.

She was announcing the award for a person randomly selected from a list of people in the Western Cape who went for an HIV test.

It was seen as a “recent news” photo and it trumped my copy, apparently. I was very sad as my story about babies born with HIV who are now reaching adolescence was later nominated for a prize in the Discovery Health Awards.

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

It was not seen to be worthy of more space by my editors despite it being one of those amazing interviews I will never ever forget for its unique subject. Getting the chance to interview consenting 18-year-olds who are HIV positive and to ask probing but respectful questions doesn’t happen often.

How would you improve coverage of HIV and health issues?

I think that most of the time most health journos really do take their specialisation seriously and do cover

good and important stories. I tried to do that anyway.

Perhaps the only area which is often left out is scientific research into a cure for HIV. These stories are technical and require in-depth understanding of trials and how they work.

The research terminology can be paraphrased incorrectly by journos, leading to embarrassing mistakes. Over time, confidence is gained in this area and health journos can do well to keep the public up to date on where we are in the race to find a cure.

AIDS Supplement, November 30, 2012

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Be interested in life

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Sipho Masombuka

Sipho Masombuka has been a reporter for The Times since 2011, and has worked as a journalist since 2003. Previously, he was a senior reporter for the Sowetan and the Pretoriabased Tshwane Sun Community Newspaper group, where he helped to launch a township edition of Tshwane Sun community newspapers in 2006. Masombuka studied journalism at Intec College and completed media law and ethics and election reporting courses at the Institute for Advancement of Journalism.

He looked close to home to find his story about a couple, one HIV positive and the other HIV negative. He immersed himself in his research and literally lived the couple’s story as he uncovered what it was like to be part of a “sero-discordant” couple (one partner is HIV positive and the other is HIV negative). This was despite the challenge of having to meet deadlines for The Times and having to restrict his words in a tersely worded tabloid newspaper.

Journalist The Times

“What I have learned is that you need to be interested in every facet of life, be able to link issues across the spheres.”

How did you come up for a story on a sero-discordant couple?

When we were given the task of finding a story idea, I decided to look around me. Ideas were everywhere, even in my own house. I picked up the dilemma of sero-discordancy. I chased the idea and found my case study.

When I am out in the field, I observe what catches my attention, and then develop a hypothesis, which acts as my guide. I identify potential sources, research paths and a case study. I talk to as many people as I can, from the man at the gate of the clinic to a shebeen queen and experts.

If you invest enough in your career, you literally develop a nose for story ideas. You’ll find yourself flooded with new concepts and with that comes the luxury of being able to pick and choose.

What challenges did you face in collecting your information for the story and how did you navigate through them?

Time was the biggest challenge for me. I work in a racy daily paper environment. I realised early that if I didn’t sacrifice my free time, I would not achieve my goal. I ended up living a double life, spending time at home and spending time with the sero-discordant couple.

It is also a challenge to sell a story to an editor. I have editors who support a good story. It is about how you sell it. I take the initiative if I believe in a story.

The other challenge for us at daily newspapers is space. There are many stories that could have been better told given more space. But due to the size of the paper, you end up thinking as small as the space you have.

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

If you were an editor what would you do to improve coverage, bearing in mind the lack of budget and space constraints?

I would tell the stories in phases, part one and part two, etc, grabbing the reader in the process.

Are people still hesitant to talk about HIV? The couple I interviewed was grateful they had someone willing to spend time with them, to listen to their dilemma and then go out to find answers for them. Despite willingly sharing personal and intimate information about their life, they also gained something from me. It’s about how you get people to open up to you, not about how they react.

The public often complain they are saturated with bad news stories and HIV stories. What can a writer do to get a reaction from the public to HIV stories?

I find audiences are generally not interested in HIV stories. So we need to challenge the media to respond with an approach that will recapture the public’s attention. Journalists have to think of relevant and original stories like HIV and insurance, a sero-discordant family, etc. We should look at the trends, see where people’s attention is shifting and adapt.

Do you feel your stories had an impact on your audience?

It starts with your fulfillment, then reactions are just a cherry on top. If your story makes people understand and ask questions, that’s impact. That’s the barometer of my work.

People wanted to know how I found the couple but the most reactions were about what happens when one partner is HIV positive and the other negative and they do not use protection.

HIV is often viewed as a something that only affects the poor. Obviously this is not the case, but do you find higher income, wealthier people are hesitant to talk about having HIV? Are they more secretive about it?

The truth is it does affect the poor more, not because they are promiscuous but because they are vulnerable.

How has the IWMF fellowship deepened your understanding of reporting on HIV? I had done a number of stories on the subject but I lacked an ability to cultivate human interest stories on the subject. The fellowship delivered the training which was the missing link. Through the fellowship I learned the skills to grasp and cultivate stories.

How important was understanding the science of HIV in identifying good stories?

HIV is a subject with political and social dynamics. It needs clear understanding as it is also a very intimate and emotional issue. Approaching this subject without deep understanding is like flying without a navigator.

If you were mentoring other reporters, what would you like to teach them?

When I am crafting a story, I share it with people. I don’t keep it to myself. I give it a trial run in my circles and with total strangers. Your gut feeling and reaction to the topic will give you an indication whether to drop the idea or run with it.

What I have learned is that you need to be interested in every facet of life, be able to link issues across the spheres. It’s also is about yourself and the story you want to tell. Believe in your idea, pursue it and incorporate what you learn on the journey with the story. Ride it.

The article about the sero-discordant couple shows how a little extra effort in getting to know people and tell their stories can result in a great article. I also learned a lot doing this piece and realised my abilities and shortcomings in covering the story.

The sero-discordant couple story had an impact on me as I am close to another couple in the same situation but who wouldn’t come out in public. They would ask me questions I didn’t have the answers to.

But as I gathered more information, I would pass it on to them. I also learned during research that as much as we think we know about HIV, there is still a lot that remains a mystery.

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

People don’t want pity stories

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Ina Skosana is a health reporter at the Mail & Guardian’s health journalism centre, Bhekisisa. She obtained a BA in journalism at the University of Pretoria in 2010, where she was the political reporter for the campus edition of the Afrikaans daily Beeld.

Before joining the M&G, she was the health reporter at The New Age. Skosana was a finalist for the Discovery/loveLife young health reporter in 2013, a category in the prestigious Discovery Health Journalist of the Year awards. Skosana has assisted several journalism students with projects on health journalism, and has also worked extensively with Bhekisisa fellows from other media houses who join the centre for three-month fellowships during which they expand their health journalism skills. In 2013 Skosana participated in a United Nations Population Fund consultation on maternal mortality and general women’s health coverage in Uganda. She has reported extensively on maternal health, non-communicable diseases, teenage pregnancy, medical and traditional circumcision and has also investigated how the Health Professions Council of SA deals with patients’ complaints about doctors. For the fellowship, Skosana wrote about the link between gender-based violence and HIV infection in women while she was a health reporter at The New Age newspaper. During her fellowship, she realised that HIV is no longer a story about people dying, but about people living with the virus.

How did you get the idea for your stories?

At first I wanted to investigate the link between sexual violence and HIV infection of women. Women are already biologically more susceptible to contracting HIV, and the risk is even higher for women who have been raped.

How did you find your subjects?

I found two case studies at a place of safety in Johannesburg where I made arrangements to meet the women with the centre’s director. Social workers selected people whom they thought would be able to speak about their experiences, briefed them and prepared them in advance.

Ina Skosana Health Journalist Mail & Guardian

“It is important to respect your audience and in cases where you are writing a narrative respect your subject.”

One of the women had been repeatedly raped by her stepfather. The other one’s husband was cheating on her. Both women had been physically abused and the shelter was their only hope for protection.

The woman who was raped by her stepfather was very open. She had had a tough life and was determined to get back on track and raise her new baby. She was a graduate of Wits (the University of the Witwatersrand) and was determined to find a job. She was an educated woman who had landed in a bad situation.

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The second, a businesswoman, had been at the centre for a week and she was very scared and traumatised.

I had to ask the photographer to wait outside so that I could speak to her on her own first.

What challenges did you face while setting up your stories?

My news editor said it sounded as though I was saying that all rapists have HIV. At the time I was struggling to get information (studies with relevant figures) that directly linked sexual violence to HIV infection. A bulk of the information I got was about the link between gender-based violence and HIV infection.

To get past the issue, I decided to look at genderbased violence as a whole (including sexual abuse) and as social determinant of HIV. The bill for gender equality was being tabled in Parliament and I used that as the news angle to make the story relevant.

One of the biggest challenges was having to work 12 hours a day and on weekends to get the work done on top of my duties as a daily newspaper reporter.

I wrote three pieces for the fellowship that were spread over one page. The stories looked at how genderbased violence and gender imbalances increased women’s risk of contracting HIV and how the gender equality bill could possibly empower women.

What are some of the difficulties you face in a newsroom today in researching and setting up a story?

There are never enough hands. You always have to plan far ahead so that a photographer is available.

Sometimes I do the interviews for an article on my own and the photographer follows later on. And often I don’t have enough time to do all of the stories I planned on writing.

But with the internet and the rise of online journalism we are challenged to think of creative ways to make one story accessible for different platforms. If I find a good story for the newspaper, I chat to the multimedia department to see how we can craft the story for both platforms. Sometimes they’ll take a different angle to the story or create a slide show with a voice-over.

What did you conclude from your research?

Apart from the obvious biological factors that make women more susceptible to HIV infection, power dynamics in relationships make it difficult for women to negotiate condom use.

During the fellowship I learned that it is important to tell stories that reflect social realities such as children growing up HIV positive and the challenges they face as they grow up.

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I wrote a story recently about a young woman living openly with HIV. She was 19 when she became ill and was admitted to hospital. It was there that she discovered that she had been born with HIV. She spoke candidly about how she negotiates her love life and dating and her fear of rejection.

I think people are tired of reading about people dying of AIDS. They want to read about people living with HIV and how they deal with the challenges they face on a daily basis. This story got a very good response from our readers. I think it’s because it wasn’t the stereotypical poor, rural woman but an educated middle-class business-woman, somebody they could relate to.

People don’t want to read “pity stories” anymore.

With treatment people are living longer and with that comes new challenges such as purchasing life insurance and the development of chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes.

In the Northern Cape recently a waiter serving us told us quite openly that he had HIV. Not long ago that would never have happened. He was an ordinary guy working in a restaurant. These are the stories that we need to be telling.

Was the mentorship a valuable experience for you?

It was difficult for me because I am a young journalist and struggled to balance her input with my own ideas.

I had to change the angle of story a couple of times to fit in with the editor’s brief. My mentor and I met twice a month and kept constantly in touch. Whenever the angle changed she reminded me what the original angle was. But in the end it was a very useful experience.

Do you feel your stories had an impact on society?

The story earned a nomination for the Discovery loveLife young health journalist of the year. A review by the HIV & AIDS media project had this to say about the articles: “The report explains that the need to address gender equality goes hand-in-hand with preventing the spread of HIV in an accessible, readerfriendly way, raising awareness among the public and potentially paving the way for tangible change at grassroots level.”

How important is knowledge of the science of HIV in covering your stories?

You always need to understand your topic but you can’t be afraid of asking questions. I usually ask scientists and professors to explain things to me in English if I don’t understand. If you don’t know what you are talking about, it will show in your writing.

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

I think it’s important that journalists write factually correct articles especially when it comes to HIV.

If you were a mentor what advice would you give a young journalist?

Journalism is not a nine-to-five job. Every story needs time and sometimes it means you have to work on weekends or even overnight to get the story done.

There will be challenges like dealing with heavy topics such as death or delays in getting answers from experts and government departments. But if you don’t push,

you come up with a half-baked story.

When a person is passionate about what they are doing it comes out in their story. It is important to respect your audience and in cases where you are writing a narrative respect your subject.

It is important to keep your stories balanced as far as possible. Give credit where it is due. For example, South Africa’s state-funded HIV treatment programme is the biggest in the world, but at the same time be realistic – some people are being denied treatment due to drug stock-outs.

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Follow the money

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Laura Lopez Gonzalez Health Journalist Health-e News Service

“The story in 2003 was relatively simple: People were dying and needed treatment. The story of HIV will never be that simple again.”

Laura Lopez Gonzalez began covering HIV in 2003, when she completed an in-depth reporting project on HIV among men who have sex with men in Chicago, Illinois, and Cape Town, South Africa, as part of her undergraduate coursework at the Medill School of Journalism in Chicago. She later completed a master's thesis on counterintuitive links between conflict and HIV transmission in Mozambique as part of the University of Chicago's Committee on International Relations before returning to South Africa.

Lopez spent five years as a freelance journalist reporting for the United Nations HIV/ AIDS news service, IRIN/PlusNews.

Prior to this experience, she worked for various South African print media outlets such as The Star, The Sunday Times and The Cape Times. While working for IRIN/PlusNews, she covered HIV epidemics in South Africa, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Swaziland. She also partnered with organizations such as the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health and South Africa's Aurum Institute to train fellow journalists in the reporting of clinical trials. In 2010, she was awarded a Gender and Media in Southern Africa Award for best sustained reporting for her work on forced sterilizations among HIV-positive women in Namibia and pregnancy-related HIV stigma. Gonzalez focused her fellowship investigation on HIV budgets. She felt it was important to show how the budget process works so that donors could know how their money was being spent.

Your stories were geared for a foreign audience. How did you decide what you were going to investigate and write about for the fellowship?

My stories looked at budget. Health journalists have tended not to follow money reporting, although they do seem to be moving in that direction.

It is very important to know how the budget process works and where donor money has gone. People can tell you all sorts of things about how the money is spent. It’s important that you understand how it should be spent so that as a journalist you can monitor it.

Budget reporting is challenging. If we look at what happened in the Eastern Cape province recently where there are reports of around R800 million of the health budget being misspent, it is clear there are definite issues.

In my stories I’ve tried to show what happens when budgets are misspent.

In Zambia, for example, I tracked what had happened after money from the Global Fund went missing due to alleged corruption. The money stopped flowing and you could see the impact. Patients were showing up for treatment but there were was no medication available. I tried to take the reader up the chain to show what happened.

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

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What lessons would you pass on if you were a mentor?

You have to know the science of HIV and be comfortable with it. You have to read the boring stuff.

The stuff that is never a story itself.

Also be up to date on policy. If you don’t know what policy is then you don’t know what patients are entitled to.

Reporting on HIV is often a sensitive matter. You have to have deep understanding of journalistic ethics and the press code. When you are naming people, for example, it is a sensitive subject matter. So we need to know our laws and think about the effects reporting can have, especially with children. When you are reporting stories on children, it can be an ethical minefield.

You moved to South Africa from the United States at the height of the AIDS pandemic in this country.

What were your impressions when you started as a reporter?

I began reporting on HIV in 2003. In South Africa, it was an electric time. HIV had all the trappings of typical headline news – politics, power struggles, scandals and most of all horrifying images of people dying by the thousands as government denied treatment.

The story then was relatively simple: People were dying and needed treatment. The story of HIV will never be that simple again.

Don’t get me wrong. Today, there are countries like Burma where less than 40 percent of people living with HIV have access to the medicines they need to stay alive. Doctors working in countries like Burma and the Democratic Republic of Congo will tell you that in these corners of the world, time has stood still – it’s still 2003.

Pills are easy to count, but understanding the science of HIV treatment monitoring tells us that there’s more to count than just treatment initiations.

Is the HIV conversation changing in South Africa?

For years, journalists and patients alike talked almost exclusively about CD4 counts, which measure the immune system’s strength. For most patients, CD4 counts still determine when they will start ARVs but they can’t tell us how all these millions of people already on treatment are doing.

The conversation is changing. There is increased discussion about access to HIV viral load testing, which measures the amount of HI virus in a patient’s blood.

If patients adhere to treatment – and have not developed drug resistance – viral loads should be so small that tests cannot detect HIV in their blood.

These tests are also much better and quicker than CD4 counts at detecting drug resistance or non–adherence, meaning clinicians can help patients sooner.

While South Africa has better access to viral load testing than most, data from Medicines Sans Frontières sites in Kenya, Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa are showing high rates of detectable viral loads in children.

Not only does this suggest that children and their care givers are having a tough time sticking to treatment, but that these children are at risk of becoming resistant to their ARVs and dying.

Most countries don’t have access to viral load testing, which means that national treatment programmes operate somewhat in the dark. Governments can tell you how many people started treatment but how patients are doing on treatment becomes more difficult.

But in South Africa, and southern Africa more broadly, countries are celebrating treatment programmes that have achieved “universal access,” meaning that about 80 percent of those in need are on antiretroviral (ARVs).

Viral loads are not an easy story to tell. The subject is “tetchy” and the background needed to explain its importance to your readers will cost you about 100 words, but it is an important one.

With these successes, the story of HIV has thankfully changed. It’s also become even more challenging to tell. The challenge isn’t just AIDS fatigue more than 30 years on, it’s also because – in the broadest of pen strokes – the horror stories editors love are less obvious.

Finding them in a country like South Africa takes knowledge of the science and the systems.

Without it, the story of HIV treatment ends when people pick up their first bottle of ARVs from the clinic and the story’s just not that simple anymore.

Since 2009, South Africa has rapidly ramped up its HIV treatment numbers. In 2010, about 560 000 people were on ARVs in the country. Today, that number is close on two million.

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

Have passion for the story Ramatamo Sehoai works as a reporter at Alex Pioneer, a community newspaper in Alexandra, a township of Johannesburg. His job has exposed him to the dire effects of poverty and underdevelopment in his community. He has attended science and investigative reporting conferences at the University of the Witwatersrand and is working on a BA in communication science at the University of South Africa.

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Sehoai has had to confront the harsh realities of HIV/AIDS after losing two of the closest people in his life to AIDS, his friend and his cousin. He has covered several stories relating to the epidemic in his community.

For the IWMF fellowship, Sehoai investigated male circumcisions.

Despite the challenge of working for an underfunded, understaffed community newspaper, Sehoai’s report led to the establishment of the first Medical Male Circumcision (MMC) clinic in Alexandra township in December 2011.

Ramatamo Sehoai Journalist

You covered male circumcisions. How did you conceive that story before working on it?

To me this was quite an easy catch. There was no MMC clinic in Alexandra. The story addressed the plight of young men who travelled from Alexandra to Orange Farm to be circumcised. Alexandra, like any other township in South Africa, deserved to have an MMC clinic. It could not be ignored.

Eventually the story led to the opening of a Medical Male Circumcision (MMC) clinic in Alexandra in 2011.

The concept of MMC was still a new phenomenon in SA, particularly for the community of Alexandra. The story gave them the background information needed to start an MMC clinic. East African countries found that an MMC reduced the chances of HIV infection by 60 percent.

Alex Pioneer

“There is nothing more gratifying than well-written stories that change people’s lives.”

What challenges did you face in collecting your information for the story and how did you navigate through them?

Deadlines are always a challenge. When you are given many things to do it is difficult to focus. But when you have your priorities in order it is easy to navigate.

The lack of budget was another challenge to be overcome. This is even more difficult when you are reporting for a small community media organisation struggling to sustain itself as a result of small advertising revenue. Staff morale is low, and there is a shortage of skilled staff.

Investigative reporting needs a significant budget and you have to dedicate time. This is difficult if you are the only journalist responsible for filling the paper. Right now MDDA (the Media Development and Diversity Agency) is the only body funding black-owned community

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media enterprises.

Big investigations require extensive travelling, research and numerous phone calls. You also need voice recorders, cameras and laptops. This was made possible through the financial support I received from IWMF. If I hadn’t received that support I would have struggled to complete my investigation.

As journalists embarking on a long-term investigation, we need to make our editors understand why the particular story is so important.

Can you still cover a health and HIV story well without a large budget?

One can only try under difficult conditions. The most difficult aspect is when you battle to get key voices in the story on time. Key sources cancel appointments at crucial moments, making deadlines tighter. In Alexandra the only reference point for health stories is our four public clinics. There are few NGOs that are vocal on health matters.

However, it is possible. One of the most important lessons learnt from the fellowship was to be creative.

Look beyond the obvious. Develop the ability to create a long-term investigation out of ordinary events.

Another point to mention is what kind of health story will make news in Alexandra. Are people dying or getting sick? What is a shock factor in this story?

Health stories should be less technical. Your community audience should find them easy to relate to. HIV remains a new story in Alexandra where readers are accustomed to service delivery stories. Anything is possible if community news teams, including editors, work together on the story by understanding the picture.

Lately there are quite a lot of organisations that offer funding and small grants for good investigative stories.

If they like your idea, there is no excuse for you not to pursue the story.

Were space issues a challenge for you? Were you concerned about your article being cut down and losing its essence?

Yes, this has happened many times because the paper is small. The longest story is only 400 words. The paper is only eight pages in size and comes out every fortnight. Alternatively, the story could be cut out into a series. Normally adverts are more likely to be prioritised for obvious reasons.

To what extent did you liaise with your editor while researching the article?

The most important thing is communication between

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journalists and editors. If these two sets of people work together, nothing is impossible.

Next, make sure that you have reliable contacts. A few clear phone calls can cut out travelling expenses.

Also have a good archive and work on follow-ups.

Most of the stories have to start somewhere.

As a community newspaper it is good to maintain relations with bigger players for information as they don’t regard us as their competition.

In your experience has the appetite for stories about HIV declined in recent years?

Most definitely. HIV was a big story two decades ago.

People were dying and the TAC (Treatment Action Campaign) took government to court. Former president Thabo Mbeki denied the link between HIV and AIDS. Young Nkosi Johnson (a 12-year-old AIDS activist) spoke out before he died.

Today not many people are dying. HIV is no longer a shock story. To bridge these gaps, the creativity of a journalist is needed. Health, like crime, poverty and corruption, is still a story if presented with research and facts.

You cannot separate HIV and health from other socioeconomic challenges facing the country. Almost all the issues written about are interlinked.

Some editors no longer believe health and HIV sells the paper.

As journalists it is our duty to keep our readers informed on the latest scientific discoveries on various diseases.

There is a health story out there for each of us.

HIV is competing with sensational issues that sell papers. Crime stories top the most widely read. Editors are under pressure to drive up the sales. The public want to be shocked. Most editors and probably the public are waiting for the headline “HIV cure is found”.

Journalists have to find a way of linking HIV with other matters of public importance, making it exciting and new. People want to read about new things. It takes skill to research what has not been written on HIV and come up with something new.

How did you set up your stories?

It is not difficult at all. Good and reliable contacts are the way to go. As a journalist is very important to be credible and have a good relationship with your sources. One must bear in mind there are two sides to the story: antagonist and protagonist. The protagonist is always available, while the antagonist is hard to find.

To be a good reporter, you need to be curious and have an eye and ear for a good story. You need patience

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

and have to be interested in human beings and society.

You have to be brave, independent and passionate.

You need to write well.

Did you find that people were hesitant to talk about HIV? Stigma is keeping most people quiet. The media and civil society need to play a leading role in providing a platform that enables people to open up. More education and awareness are needed.

Do you feel your stories had an impact on your community?

The MMC story remains the best story I have written.

It was something new and people reacted positively to it.

This was very important information on HIV. After the story was published many people did not hesitate to make enquiries and started participating.

You realise the power of journalism. Poor communities are full of human interest stories. A young grade 12 pupil is looking for a bursary. A shack is burnt. A child is lost. People are struggling to bury their dead. Children are hungry. Someone is looking for the job, etc.

Have any particular stories changed you?

Sometimes the stories are about seeking justice for the marginalised. There is nothing more gratifying than well-written stories that change people’s lives.

How has the IWMF fellowship deepened your understanding of reporting on HIV? I can never thank the IWMF enough, in particular the facilitator, Paula Fray. She has been my mentor since I became a journalist four years ago. IWMF taught me there is no ending to the HIV story. There are lot of untold stories on HIV waiting to be unpacked. It has taught me never to take things for granted.

What are some of the important lessons you have learned? How important was understanding the science of HIV to identifying good stories?

Science needs to be simplified. Turn science into a good narrative.

Journalism has evolved over the ages. In the digital age we use multimedia journalism to cater for a technologically inclined audience. I learnt about the power of social networks to help with a story.

Networking among the fellows themselves is very important for skills exchange.

If you were mentoring other reporters, what would you like to teach them?

People work with you if you have passion. Believe first in yourself. Journalism is different from other careers in that you don’t wait to be told what to do. You need to initiate and be creative.

HIV is often viewed as a something that affects only the poor. Obviously this is not the case, but do you find that wealthier people are hesitant to talk about having HIV? I once argued that the face of HIV in South Africa is black.

The wealthy and the whites are clever. The HIV status of the weathy and white people remains confidential.

They don’t participate in studies. They’ve got medical AIDS at private hospitals. They are very secretive and die in silence. I was once told at my local clinic that people come from KwaZulu-Natal to Alexandra to fetch their ARVs because they don’t want anyone in their neighbourhood to notice.

Celebrities are worried about more about their name and status. They are very secretive. We only learn about them once they have died. They use their money to build themselves castles and high walls behind which they die in silence.

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

Find human face of the story Bianca Capazorio graduated from Rhodes University in Grahamstown with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and journalism. She started her career at The Herald in Port Elizabeth in 2005 before taking time off to travel the world and teach English in China in 2008. She worked at the Weekend Argus in Cape Town from 2009 until November 2013 when she joined the Sunday Times.

She wrote her articles for the fellowship while working at The Weekend Argus. One of Capazorio’s articles for the IWMF was about a well known Cape Town street child who was living with HIV. When the boy died, Capazorio wanted to find out if there were more like him. She encountered hostility from an NGO and a lack of enthusiasm from her superiors who had grown fatigued with HIV stories. Despite the challenges, Capazorio produced a gripping article how the lives of Cape Town’s street children opened them to the risk of contracting HIV. The street children were often sexually exploited and in return might be paid with Coke, bread, a small amount of money or drugs. Her second story was on the government’s decision to phase out formula for babies after research found that mothers could safely breast feed while on antiretroviral therapy. She followed up this story with an article about a baby girl who contracted HIV after being breast-fed by a well-meaning aunt. It was the first proven case of a baby who had contracted HIV from a surrogate.

Where did you come up with the ideas for your stories on breastfeeding and street children?

During the initial training during the fellowship, various experts were brought in to talk to the journalists about aspects of HIV and public health.

I developed the breastfeeding idea during the training.

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Bianca Capazorio Journalist The Sunday Times

“When you work on a story you have to look at it in a way that targets the people who are reading it.

You have to make it interesting.”

The street child story was sparked from a story I had written previously about a young street child who had died after living with HIV. He was really well-known street child in Cape Town. Several organisations had worked with him and many people had given him money and food. He had appeared on television programmes and had been interviewed by a wellknown blogger from overseas. The boy died in 2011.

People had tried to get him to go for treatment, but he was a child born on the street. The street culture was deeply ingrained in him. Once a culture is ingrained, it's very difficult to change it. With ARVs, you need a fixed routine and regular meals. Those aren't things that street children do. I was interested to find out if there were more like him living on the streets of Cape Town.

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What did you discover from the article on street children? Are there large numbers of children living with HIV on the streets of Cape Town?

In the end I found that no one knew whether there was a phenomenon of street children living with HIV. Many organisation were very secretive or would ignore me completely. One Catholic organisation I went to said a lot of children who had been coming for help were at risk because of the nature of their lives on the street and because of their behaviour.

Wherever I went it appeared as though no one was addressing this problem.

The average street child is not going to walk into a facility and get treatment. They are scared. One organisation that had done testing for people living on the street had to close due to a lack of funding. At this organisation a child could at least get a meal and then get tested.

What were the difficulties or challenges you had while working on these stories?

It was difficult doing stories in addition to regular work.

Time was really short.

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It was also difficult trying to get my editors on board.

There is fatigue around HIV stories. For a long time, HIV stories were about death and ARVs not being available. This created fatigue in the public. Still, there are so many stories not being told. The street children story was one that had been ignored.

Did your stories get much reaction once they were published?

I had a lot of reaction from organisations that deal with street kids. I had an angry letter from one organisation that had initially refused to deal with my newspaper group. They said I shouldn’t have run the story as it dealt with children.

The breast feeding article caused a lot of reaction from people. They asked a lot of questions because they were concerned that the government’s policy of phasing out free infant formula wouldn’t work.

I also had complaints about the picture that accompanied the article of woman breastfeeding. Many people were for some reason not happy that we published the picture in our newspaper.

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

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What research did you do for these stories beforehand?

I read through reports and spent lots of time interviewing experts. But no matter how much research you do, you should always find a human aspect to the story.

I always try to find a subject to put a story around.

How important is it for a journalist to have an understanding of the science of HIV? The fellowship brought experts in who broke down the myths around HIV and educated us about the language we needed to use as journalists. That helped a lot. As a journalist you definitely need a basic grasp of the science of HIV. Without that knowledge you’ll be working in the dark.

It also helped because you can keep a look out for new research and new discoveries on HIV. There is often a lot that can be written from there.

It is also important to keep an eye on laws as they change. The breastfeeding story, for example, came from me keeping an eye on the government's HIV policies.

You mentioned fatigue with HIV stories?

How can a journalist capture the public's attention with an HIV story in 2013?

When you work on a story you have to look at it in a way that targets the people who are reading it. You have to make it interesting. Put a human face to it. People relate to people. They might come out with a better understanding after reading it.

What were some of the important lessons you learned from this fellowship?

The main lesson I learned was to think outside the box. Find creative ways to write a story. Write in the narrative. There are so many stories out there.

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

Many ideas in the field Katharine Child is a journalist for The Times in Johannesburg.

After teaching English as a second language in Taiwan and Cape Town, she returned to study journalism at Wits University.

She interned at Talk Radio 702 and trained students to write and collect radio news at Wits University’s radio station. In 2011, Child was awarded the Anthony Sampson Fellowship to do rural health reporting. She went to the middle of nowhere in KwaZulu-Natal to find untold stories, one of which was published in Mail & Guardian. Child has worked for The Times since January 2012.

In her investigation for the IWMF fellowship, Child travelled to Orange Farm, a sprawling township south of Johannesburg, where she visited the Boipelo Clinic and where more than 50,000 young men had been circumcised and “come to no harm”. She also worked on an article about sex workers and their experience of HIV. Faced with the challenge of a shortage of time to gather information for the articles in between daily news reporting duties and a shortage of space in The Times, Child conducted interviews with scientists in the middle of her day while writing daily news reports. She had to plan well in advance to make sure she had sufficient daily articles lined up that she could write before or after other interviews for the project. Space was another challenge.

Her story for the fellowship on sex workers was a challenge in itself. They were hesitant to talk as they had been burnt before by the journalists who had identified them or had photos taken of them when they declined to be photographed.

Child believes that most stories about HIV are about the poor, but wealthier people who can afford private doctors, stay “hidden, as do their stories”.

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Katharine Child Journalist The Times

“I think not enough is written about children with HIV and the difficulties of treating paediatric HIV.”

How did you conceive your stories? Was there a moment when you realised you had a great story that needed to be told?

Ideas for stories always arise in the field. By staying behind after a press conference and talking to people, one picks up more information. Stories lead to stories. That’s why it is important to get out of the office and into the field to meet people and build relationships. It’s one of the best ways to generate new ideas and fresh stories.

I have had many HIV ideas from SA AIDS conference. One story leads to the next.

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What kind of research did you do beforehand? Was it important to have a thorough understanding of the science of HIV? I always do a lot of research, but this can be a problem as it's hard to include as many facts and details as I would like in a 350-word story.

Understanding the science is important. I interviewed scientists and needed to understand what they were saying. I had to understand how TB works, how laboratory equipment is tested and monitored and so on.

What challenges did you face in collecting information for your stories and how did you navigate through them?

I faced many challenges. The first was time to gather information for the articles in between daily news reporting. I did interviews with scientists in the middle of my day while writing daily news reports. I had to plan well in advance to make sure I had sufficient daily articles lined up that I could write before or after other interviews I had to do for the project.

Space is another challenge. The stories in our paper are usually 350 words in length. Some are 250. The Orange Farm story I wrote was given an entire page – after the advert. We even fitted in two photos. I was given a lot of space. I planned it for a Monday. This is a day when more space is available as there are fewer reporters on duty at the weekend and as a result fewer stories competing for a place in the paper.

The story on sex workers took ages. I had to set up a meeting with Sweat (Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce) and Sisonke workers to get permission for the sex workers to speak to me. They were very reluctant to talk initially as they had been burnt before by the media. They had been identified or had photos taken when they declined to be photographed. They insisted I call them sex workers and not prostitutes. I had then to liaise with my deputy editor and editor to use the term sex workers.

Can you cover a story about HIV well without a large budget?

Yes, a journalist can still cover a health story adequately by using a telephone and speaking to people. I am based in Johannesburg and there are lots of NGOs and clinics here that deal with HIV–positive patients who live less than an hour away.

Many are within easy driving distance. Orange Farm, the home of the circumcision research piece, is only a 45-minute drive away from our office. I wrote a story on Orange Farm for the fellowship. I have written HIV stories based on research in the South African Medical

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Journal. This is a free journal where cutting-edge research is presented, so budget does not necessarily constrain access to research.

Do you feel your story have had an impact on your audience?

I don’t always know what kind of impact they have.

I am not sure one ever finds out what people read and what they think. One can tweet and hopefully people reply. I can see the comments on the website where our stories are online. In my Orange Farm piece, someone sent a long letter saying my stats were wrong and the research was bogus. But the research I quoted was from esteemed medical journal articles.

Why do some stories work and others not?

It depends on whether your news editors like the story.

Do they think it works?

It also depends on how much breaking news is in the newspaper that day and how much space is available for your story. It could even depend on the number of adverts in the paper on a given day. Limited space could lead to a story being cut.

Also if it is too technical and scientific, it may confuse readers and the newspaper’s sub-editors may then cut the piece or ask for it to be changed for greater clarity.

Did you find a lack of appetite from the public and from editors about HIV stories?

No. My editors are very positive about HIV stories. At least 13 of my articles on HIV have been published this year. Many get well read on the website.

Did you find your subjects hesitant to talk about HIV? It depends on whom you speak to. University professors are not hesitant to discuss HIV as they work in the field.

The sex workers I speak to talk about it because they are aware of the risks. The NGO members are also willing to speak. People unwilling to talk are hard to find so, of course, one does not speak to them.

What would you do to improve coverage of HIV, bearing in mind the lack of budget and space constraints?

I would send journalists to conferences on HIV. I would give them time to meet contacts from NGOs and universities. I would also use a report like the UN AIDS Report and unpack it and find multiple stories. Usually reporters write one story on a report and move on.

There are often hidden stories in the pages of a report.

It’s important to use the research being done and cover it in fresh stories.

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

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I think HIV is perceived to be a disease that affects mainly poor black people. I have not succeeded in finding whites with HIV but, of course, it is a disease that affects people of all races and colour. I will keep trying to identify whites living with HIV. I think not enough is written about children with HIV and the difficulties of treating paediatric HIV.

How has the IWMF fellowship deepened your understanding of reporting on HIV? It has led me to understand that there are many elements to HIV stories. They can be subtle stories.

What are some of the important lessons you have learned?

I should have planned my time better to manage the fellowship and my reporting. HIV stories are everywhere

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– and they can be really interesting. One needs persistence and character. One also needs humility.

I am working on a science story and I have to ask lots of questions of the professor and be humble enough to keep saying I do not understand.

If you were mentoring other reporters, what lessons would you pass on?

I would teach them to be persistent and never give up.

They must keep going and not be discouraged when stories get cut for space or when politically correct activists complain about the headlines. They must find joy in telling people stories and giving a voice to the marginalised and publicising good work. They must keep on keeping on. Passion makes news editors excited about the stories.

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

MULTIMEDIA

Grappling with the ethics of storytelling Nastasya Tay It was a tough ask. The HIV/AIDS story in South Africa is one that readers, listeners and viewers are not only tired of, but believe they know well.

So what story is left for us to tell? I wanted to do something more detailed - to look somewhere obvious, at a subject that people thought they understood, but to go beyond the regular news story and explore what lay beneath.

It needed to be in-depth, long-form and engaging, but with hard news elements that would wrap nicely into 40 second reports for our bulletins.

The debate about sex work and decriminalisation has been raging in South Africa for years. I believed that points of reference would make all the difference, that audiences needed to understand the people at the heart of the issue in order to pass any kind of judgment.

Freelancer Journalist Eyewitness News

“The audiences needed to understand the people at the heart of the issue in order to pass any kind of judgement.”

Before I became a full-time journalist, I spent some time working at a reproductive health organisation in the inner city. There I met communities whose stories weren’t being told, because people put assumption before interest. And it was there, in Hillbrow, that I began my search for an HIV–positive sex worker who would speak to me.

Access to those communities didn’t guarantee a subject. I needed someone exceptionally brave: who would not only disclose their status, but introduce me to their family, their friends, their community. Through

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Photos: Nastasya Tay, Eyewitness News

a sex worker peer educator, I found Snowy. She was

down on the side of Oxford Road; I giggled with her as

willing, not only to confront the social taboo around sex

she blew up condoms to pad out her bra; I watched her

work, but also her homosexuality, and speak out about

cry in her old bedroom as she spoke about her childhood.

the rape at the hands of one of her clients that left her

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HIV positive.

We had been very clear about issues of objectivity and

Snowy is a transgender sex worker who took me to the

given purely voluntarily. But on the last day of our time

soup kitchen where she volunteers, to her Sunday church

together - a crucial evening of filming her working on the

service, and to the township outside Johannesburg where

street - her colleagues convinced her that she needed

the rest of her family – that she supports – lives. I watched

payment in order to go ahead. I sat in an unmarked car

her dance with her niece; I watched her wave clients

outside a Hillbrow squat, in disbelief that all our work

payment, right from the beginning. Any access was to be

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

would come to nothing. But half an hour later, Snowy changed her mind, deciding that her story needed to be told. We cried together.

She was happy for me to use her face and her name, but, after a long struggle with my own ethics, weighing up my desire to respect her right to make her own choices versus her personal safety, I decided to blur her face out, and use shots that were unrecognisable - her lips, eyelashes, hands. Snowy still works on the streets, unprotected, and

she had told me that 80 percent of her clients believed her to be a woman, and she’d managed to hide her masculinity. I didn’t feel that she fully understood the risks of the backlash it could cause, if a former client had recognised her.

As the report went to air on World AIDS Day 2011, the discussion around decriminalisation was taken off the government’s strategic plan to combat HIV/AIDS, but was added back on later under pressure from advocacy groups.

TELLING THE STORY... of a transgender sex worker Snowy took reporter Nastasya Tay to Hillbrow (top left and bottom right) where she lived, the soup kitchen she volunteered and down Oxford road where she waved down her clients.

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Grip your audience from the start

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Euline Fillis Producer SABC TV

“People found the PEP story particularly informative. It’s a good feeling to broaden people’s minds about HIV.”

Euline Fillis, the current affairs producer for SABC’s FOKUS, has covered a range of topics from human-interest stories to education, health and socio-economic issues. She has delivered breaking stories for the daily main news bulletin and current affairs programme since joining the SABC in 2008. She is passionate about social media and runs the FOKUS Facebook page. In 2011, Fillis was nominated by the ATKV for the best in-depth news insert “Uit die dwelm hel.” (“Out of drug hell”) In 2001, Fillis made her debut as a disc jockey at Imonti FM in the Eastern Cape. After completing her journalism studies at the Walter Sisulu University in 2006, she worked as a news reporter at Die Burger. She started at the SABC in 2008 and worked as an output journalist for radio before joining FOKUS in 2009.

A 45-year-old woman’s disturbing recollection of her rape attracted Fillis’s attention and was the powerful angle Fillis used to raise awareness about the administering of PostExposure Prophylaxis (PEP), a combination of anti-retroviral medications that can be used to prevent transmission of HIV. Her stories, another of which included an overview of the HIV situation in South Africa, were broadcast on radio and published on the Internet. The fellowship taught her the importance of communicating the evolution of a story with an editor and of finding a way of pegging the story to the news of the day.

How did you come up with the ideas for your stories?

Our channel is not keen on doing stories about HIV. I had to look for ways to tell an HIV story that would engage the public's interest. The challenge was to find an angle to approach the story from.

I had been working with an NGO in Cape Town called the Rape Crisis Trust. Through the NGO I met the subject for my story. She was a 45year-old woman who had recently been raped for the third time.

Her alleged rapist held her at gunpoint before he raped her. While he was raping her he kept saying, “I want to give you AIDS. I’ve got AIDS.” That was how I started my story. I felt it was a powerful way to grip my audience from the beginning.

Fortunately the woman came up HIV negative after being placed on Post-Exposure Prophylaxis (PEP).

What research did you do before starting your stories?

I did a lot of research in terms of who gets access to PEP, which is a combination of anti-retroviral medications that can be used to prevent the transmission of HIV. To receive the treatment, rape victims must

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

Rape & PEP

undergo an HIV test to determine if they are already infected.

If they are not, then they are treated with PEP for 28 days. Many South Africans who are raped don’t know that there are drugs that can prevent HIV. One aspect I looked at was why medical staff were not giving people PEP treatment at public hospitals.

There had been complications because sex workers were exploiting PEP. I interviewed Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi. The minister questioned the appropriateness of asking women about police issues when they had been raped. He instructed health professionals to be human and to treat first and ask questions later.

Why do some stories work and others not?

Often with stories, it’s about timing. You need to link a story to a current issue to get your editor to accept it.

I had to find ways to combine the story for the fellowship with something that was relevant in the news.

Fortunately it came in time for South Africa’s annual 16 Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children and I could link the two together.

The 16 days of activism is a wonderful idea because if gives journalists a chance to highlight issues that are so important to society. For those 16 days you have a chance to tell stories that during the year you might not have the chance to tell.

Did you find a lack of appetite from the public and from editors about HIV stories? What can a writer do to get the public to read, watch or listen to HIV stories?

I think it is important to grip your audience from the onset. Catchy quotes always sell a story. With radio and television, natural sound plays a major role. Pitch a story that you know will sell. It is always important

to bear in mind who you are writing for.

What challenges did you face in collecting information for your story and how did you navigate them?

Writing about HIV was a new challenge for me. I had to establish contacts. I dealt with my topics individually and also read a lot of articles and checked the profiles of various interviewees that I used in my piece to ensure that I got the best comments.

How important was the mentorship you received during the fellowship?

The mentorship part of the fellowship was very valuable.

The mentors have so much knowledge. My mentor was Mia Malan. When it comes to health, Mia knows what she is talking about. I could bounce ideas off her and ask what she thought. She has contacts and enormous experience.

When we first spoke, I had four ideas for stories for the fellowship but with Mia I narrowed it to three.

Mia also looked at the way I structured words. For example, when I mentioned people with AIDS she corrected me to say people living with AIDS. I am able now to pass on my knowledge to my colleagues.

I recently spoke to one of my colleagues and I was able to give him an idea for a story on the fixed-dosage system, which allows a person living with HIV to take one pill instead of three.

I passed on the contact details of a woman who could give him the advice he needed on the FDS. The contacts made during fellowship are instrumental.

Do you feel your stories have had an impact on your audience?

I always wanted to focus my reporting on health. It is one of the issues that you know will always be there.

So much can be done.

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Snit red lewens - Snip saves lives

It’s not always about investigative pieces. If I can inform the public somehow about cervical cancer and the importance of having a pap smear and in that way affect just one woman, that is enough. It will reduce one person’s chance of getting cervical cancer.

When I researched the PEP story, I found many people did not know that treatment was available and what the treatment entailed.

I had positive feedback from people who read the story online. I also had feedback from people sending emails and messages to the SABC’s SMS line.

People found the PEP story particularly informative.

It’s a good feeling to broaden people’s minds about HIV. I still feel, though, that we are not seeing sufficient stories that educate people on the fixed dosage system.

Many don’t know who is eligible for this treatment.

What are the important lessons you have learned by being part of this fellowship?

What I realised about reporting on HIV is that it affects anyone who practises unsafe sex or who exposes themselves to an HIV risk. It doesn’t matter whether you are rich or poor.

I think the stories of poor people living with HIV people are mostly told because they are the ones who suffer the most. They suffer financially and cannot maintain a proper diet. Sometimes they go to a clinic and there are no ARVs available.

It is easier for a working person to follow a healthy diet or go to a doctor and say this is the treatment I need and get it on medical aid.

Was it a challenge to get people to talk about living with HIV? Are people still hesitant to talk because of the stigma?

The fellowship has taught me to look at a lot of different angles for a story. I don’t hammer a lot of statistics. I believe in bringing in a human element and using that strongly. For every health story I cover, I make sure I have a case study.

Wealthier people are more secretive about living with HIV. That has to do with stigma and what people will think. I can’t see many CEOs of companies saying they are HIV positive because of the implications for them in the workplace.

An investigative piece doesn’t always need to be about corruption. You can develop a story into a human narrative. You can transform a normal article into a narrative.

I have realised that HIV is not a death sentence. ARVs prolong life. If you go onto treatment when you are HIV positive, you will increase your lifespan and live a decent quality of life. You can still become the professor you always wanted to be.

The fellowship also made me realise that you need to think in broader terms than radio and TV reporting.

Blogging, for example, is another important platform a reporter can use. You have to use every way possible to reach people.

We also need to think of ways of getting the message across to people in communities in a simpler fashion, whether we could hold meetings in communities to discuss health issues or simply chat to individuals.

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How has the IWMF fellowship deepened your understanding of reporting on HIV?

How important was understanding the science of HIV to identifying good stories?

I have a daughter aged 10. I always had to explain to her why I was going to school. She also had a lot of questions about HIV and AIDS. I was able to explain what Post-Exposure Prophylaxis was all about.

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

Don’t be afraid to ask questions Siphosethu Stuurman is a digital media producer at the SABC in Johannesburg. He holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Rhodes University and describes himself as a versatile journalist who has done radio, TV and online journalism. He started off working for NGO media houses such as Health-e News Service and IPS Africa. In 2012, he won a Discovery Health Journalism Award for Best Health Radio Journalism and he was also a finalist in the Young Health Journalist of the Year category. He covered the 5th South Africa AIDS Conference which attracted senior scientists and government officials from around the world.

Stuurman investigated the stigma attached to living with HIV and how this caused people to be hesitant in seeking treatment for the disease. His story was broadcast on SABC radio and published on the broadcaster’s website. The mentorship he received during fellowship, he says, taught him to focus on a single idea, to dig deep for information and to always look for an original idea.

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Siphosethu Stuurman Digital Media Producer

What did you want to achieve through your story?

I wanted to look at how the stigma of HIV affects the number of people who go for testing and the accessing of treatment. People still do not want to be tested because they fear finding out their status. Living with HIV means they face discrimination.

In South Africa the majority of people are treated at public facilities. If you go for treatment you go to an HIV clinic. When a person is seen there they are branded an HIV patient. People would rather risk being sick than have their neighbours know they are HIV positive. I felt this was an important issue to address.

How did you conceive and plan your story?

I know a couple of people in the field. I looked for NGOs, HIV support groups, doctors and counsellors. They know people. I told them about the story I planned to write and asked them to find subjects for me. It’s easier to get someone to agree to an interview if it is arranged through someone they know and trust.

South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC)

“You are going to interview people living with HIV, so work on your own stereotypes about the disease.”

How did you editor receive the idea?

My editor was fine with it. He liked the angle. The problem he would have had was doing an ordinary HIV story with no new element to it.

This had a new element to it. It was the selling ticket for him.

I did quite a lengthy piece. I needed to give a lot of background so length was a bit of a problem. I had to cut out quite a bit.

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I did it for SAFM too. Here time was an issue. I cut it down to five minutes. That was the challenge.

I spent a week collecting information but space and time issues came into play.

The challenge in terms of work was not buy-in but the length of time and space given the story.

How do you write original HIV stories in 2013 that will capture the public's interest?

When it’s something big and newsy, like the rollout of fixed dose pills – you take one pill now instead of three – that was big and an easy sell.

When these hard news stories arise you can still include a human story and talk about how a patient’s life will be improved with one pill instead of three.

When you cover a hard news story, you focus on one subject. You have to know what to cut and what to include.

How did you feel about being mentored through a story? Did you learn from the experience?

Yes, definitely. It helped a lot. I had an idea, but it was all over the place. Sitting down with my mentor helped me to focus and streamline the idea. I don’t get too carried away anymore. My mentor helped me clean up and take away the nonsense.

Do you feel that your story had an impact on society?

We dedicated an hour of a radio show based on the subject of the story and then people phone in to discuss it. So, yes, there was a lot of feedback on the radio.

That radio show furthered the content of the original package. Listeners called in and engaged and asked questions. Some people were angry with the story.

They thought I did not portray the stigma issues as strongly as it is on the ground. But the fact is that people responded and whether they agreed or disagreed, it meant they were listening and I had done something right.

What affected you while you were researching your story?

Research was done which showed that condom usage had dropped. People are seeing that those living with HIV live an ordinary life. They are no longer dying and the fear of the disease is lessening. People are engaging in riskier behaviour.

There was a quote from a young person recently who said if God were to give him a choice on cancer or

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HIV, he would live with HIV. You can manage HIV, treat it and live with it. It is no longer a death sentence. I think that is causing a rise in reckless behaviour.

What about your co-workers? Do you feel you are able to pass on skills you have acquired on HIV reporting?

I feel like I have become the expert on HIV and health stories. Co-workers always come and ask, is this OK? Am I writing it correctly? Is this the correct representation? In some ways I have become the guru for HIV stories.

Did you find other ideas for HIV stories from covering this one?

This story opened doors in terms of HIV reporting.

The people I interviewed for the story tended to be old. One of them was a black female. The other was a male in his forties. That is the group always talked about.

From that I had an idea to look at young people living with HIV. Now I am looking at young, modern and educated people living with HIV. These are young active people who are at the peak of their sexuality. I want to find out how living with HIV affects a young person’s life.

How has the IWMF fellowship deepened your understanding of reporting on HIV? The fellowship opened my eyes. There are so many issues and stories related to HIV to be covered. I thought HIV reporting was over-done.

This fellowship allowed me to look deeper and find stories. It’s exciting. If it were not for the fellowship, I wouldn’t have had that focus or ability to look deeper into the topic.

Now I always look for something different that will capture the attention of my editor and the public. You can always find something new if you look deep enough.

If you were mentoring other reporters, what would you like to teach them?

Do your research. That would be one of my first lessons. You must not be afraid to appear clueless.

Lots of reporters try to appear smart. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Doctors and scientists are always willing to give information. Appearing hungry and willing to suck up information is a good thing.

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

You are going to interview people living with HIV, so work on your own stereotypes about the disease. You can’t fear holding hands with someone living with HIV because they will pick it up and you are going to offend them. So before you interview any subject, make sure you are in the right mental place so that you don’t offend your subjects.

You also have to be emotionally mature. You find sometimes that subjects cry while you interview them.

It’s difficult. You must be prepared when a subject opens up. You have to be understanding. You don’t have to be a psychologist, but you can’t be a brick wall while someone is expressing their feelings. You must have a warm shoulder for them to lean on.

http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/1e2bcf8040b8ce6a836ddba58719f994/Stigma-a-barrier-in-fight-against-HIV-and-AIDS-20131408

Stigma a barrier in fight against HIV and AIDS Wednesday 14 August 2013 15:52 Sipho Stuurman She also does not get support from her husband who she suspects is HIV positive too but has never confirmed it to her.

“My husband does not tell me anything, so I’m thinking at work he takes the medication, because he does not tell me anything. When I look at him, he’s healthy, he’s fine, so I’m the one who’s HIV at home,’ she says.

Mokeona’s need for support is quite obvious, she easily opens up to anyone that’s willing to lend her a nonjudgemental ear.

Stigma can get worse when someone carries a burden of more than one illness.

Central Johannesburg is a side of town that most people try by all means to avoid, there are too many people walking about, too much noise with taxis continuously hooting and if you not careful you will get robbed of your belongings.

But 37-year-old HIV positive Sarah Mokeona from Soweto makes monthly trips to the CBD to get her antiretroviral treatment (ART) from Zuzimpilo clinic a semi-private health facility.

“I tried going to Zola but it took time and I feared they would fire me at work, it’s faster here,” says Mokeona.

Not only is the service faster at Zuzimpilo Clinic but the facility also offers a greater degree of privacy that most public health facilities fail to do.

While she pays R800 for her treatment, the risk of being seen by her neighbours while queuing is very minimal.

According to the head of Zuzimpilo clinic, Dr Limakatso Lebina, HIV patients don’t want to be seen because HIV stigma is still there and Mokeona can attest to this, she continues to experience discrimination at work.

“Things that people would say at work used to hurt me, people would look at me and make jokes about my status,” says a teary Mokeona.

It’s also visible she is troubled by her community’s negative perceptions of people living with HIV which is why she leaves behind all the free health facilities in Soweto and pays for medication at a semi private clinic.

“There are multiple layers of stigma, there is selfstigma, public stigma, internalised stigma and even professional stigma.”

Understanding the concept of stigmatization Psychiatrist, Dr Greg Jonsson says stigma should not be taken lightly as it

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has adverse effects on people living with HIV and AIDS. “There are multiple layers of stigma, there is self-stigma, public stigma, i n t e r n a l i s e d s t i g m a a n d eve n professional stigma. So if we look at stigma it’s really about society’s perception of HIV. Often this has to do with contagiousness of the illness, fatality people getting very sick as a result of HIV, often this accompanied by responsibility and immorality,” says Dr Jonsson.

He further explains another form of stigma that’s called internalised stigma.

“Internalised stigma is very much where the patient with HIV assumes those negative effects of society and internalises them and has self-doubt and decreased self-worth. Internalised stigma has been associated with depression, non-adherence, substance abuse and I think those things we really got to address,” he explains.

It does not end there though, as HIV positive patients are also stigmatised by health professionals that are supposed to look after them.

“Many doctors, many health care workers often discriminate against

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people with HIV, mental illness, they often see them as irresponsible people and therefore give them less care. I mean a number of my colleagues, I’ve heard them refer to people with HIV as smelly and less worthy of treatment,” says Dr Jonsson.

Dealing with double stigma Dr Jonsson added that stigma can get quite worse when someone carries a burden of more than one illness, for instance when a patient has mental illness and HIV. One such person is Dr Jonsson’s patient, Fabien Nove-Josserand, who is gay and has lived with HIV since 1983, just months after it was discovered.

In a months’ time he would have lived with HIV for 30 years.

“Twenty- thirty years back being HIV positive was a death sentence, I was given two years to live, I was 22 years and my doctor said to me you’ll never see your 30th birthday, there is nothing we can do for you. Today it’s a different story, if anybody tells you if you got HIV, you going to die, then they should be shot themselves, today its considered a chronic illness,” says the outspoken Nove-Josserand.

While Nove-Josserand speaks freely about his HIV status today, he too went through a tough time.

“You go through a cycle of denial, depression, anger and eventually you get to acceptance, and sometimes you just cycle between denial, anger and depression. I went through all these in just about four hours, I went crazy until I reached a point where I say there is no point in me denying this. So if you gay with HIV and bipolar for example, its three sorts of stigmas, its three closet you have to come out of,” he says.

Nove-Josserand has taken a no-nonsense approach when it comes to who he surrounds himself with.

“I think HIV is a great eliminator because when somebody does not accept you because you have HIV then you eliminate that person out of your life, they have nothing to do in your life. I told my father in the same sentence, I am gay and I have HIV, can you imagine that’s a double whammy and he looked at me and said I don’t care you my son and I love you,” he says.

Effects of stigma According Zuzimpilo clinic’s Dr Lebina, stigma does not only prevents people

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

from testing it also prevents them from accessing treatment.

“People don’t want to test, and they don’t want to know that they are HIV positive. Some say ‘it can’t happen to me because I have been stigmatising people living with HIV, if I find out I’m like them then that would be the worst discovery’,” she says.

The South African guidelines have changed people with a CD4 count below 350 can access treatment but Dr Lebina says people still access treatment late due to stigma.

“The majority of people that start treatment still have low CD4 counts, they still have CD4 counts below 200 not close to 350 which shows people are accessing treatment late, they are testing when they are already sick,” says Dr Lebina.

Government’s dodgy approach to stigma The government is also well aware of the challenges posed by stigma.

In its 2012-2016 National Strategic Plan (NSP) on HIV and AIDS, the government outlined its plans to beat the disease by 2032.

The plans include zero new HIV infections, zero AIDS-related deaths and Zero stigma.

Gauteng MEC of Health Hope Papo agrees that stigma is proving to be a problem in the fight against HIV and AIDS. “We are saying that stigmatising people with HIV is totally wrong, particularly from people who don’t even know their own status, those people are called AIDS anonymous, they don’t know their status but they stigmatise people,” says Papo.

But even with a HIV and AIDS budget of R2 258 483 000 for the 2013/14 financial year little seems to be going towards fighting stigma.

Gauteng has estimated at 1.3 million people living with HIV and a total of 757,177 are on ARV’s.

“We are tackling stigma by emphasising that more people should come forward and get tested. In that way, if many of us are tested, the stigma goes because if many of us are testing, we get to know our status,” says Papo.

MEC Papo’s strategy to tackle stigma seems to be riding on only encouraging people to test. But how will people go and test if they fear finding out their HIV statuses due to stigma?

Lack of will to tackle stigma HIV stigma does not grab the headlines, no one protests over it and remains a largely ignored critical issue.

The impact of stigma goes beyond individuals infected with HIV, it divides families, communities and most importantly prevents people from testing and accessing treatment.

As a country that still has the highest number of infected people in the world with 6.4 million, perhaps it’s time HIV stigma became a central part of the country’s prevention strategies.

Sipho Stuurman is an International Womens Media Foundation (IWMF) Health Journalism Fellow.

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REVIEW 2011-2013

Three Years of IWMF Fellowship

Caption:

South Africa is believed to have more people infected with HIV/AIDS than any other country in the world. Yet, mainstream media coverage of the pandemic has been characterized by a lack of urgency, failure to examine the reasons behind stigma and denial, and inadequate engagement with people living with the disease.

To transform the way that HIV/AIDS reporting is done in South Africa, the IWMF created its HIV/AIDS Investigative Reporting Fellowship in 2011 with support from the MAC AIDS Fund.

Since then 30 journalists from radio, television and print media have received year-long fellowships, providing investigative reporting training with a focus on the complex issues surrounding the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

This training, coordinated by frayintermedia on behalf of the IWMF, is supported by field trips, exposure to expert sources and a coaching by top investigative reporters. Fellows are paired with seasoned mentors who provide ongoing support. Fellows complete four investigative stories over the course of the fellowship.

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

The goals of the programme are: •

to produce accurate, consistent and more rigorous indepth reporting on HIV/AIDS;

•

to incorporate women's roles, stories, needs and solutions in HIV/AIDS coverage; and

•

to reduce gender inequities in the newsroom.

Fellows report that the programme has opened their eyes to the range of HIV/AIDS stories that need to be told. In addition to stories produced, fellows built a valuable network of diverse contacts, including experts who participated in training workshops and sources provided by their wellconnected mentors. The programme has substantially advanced fellows’ investigative journalism skills and HIV/AIDS content knowledge, positively impacting their careers.

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MENTOR Mia Malan started reporting on health at the SABC's Eastern Cape office in 1995.

She went on to work for radio and television's current affairs programmes in Johannesburg before moving to Kenya in the early 2000s to head Internews Network, Kenya's health journalism training programme. Later she served as Internews chief health journalism trainer in the United States.

She returned to South Africa as a John S Knight Journalism fellow and also taught journalism at Rhodes University.

Mia Malan Health Editor/ Bhekisisa director (M&G health journalism centre) The Mail & Guardian

“Skill only develops through passion and hard work. What you want to make of your career is up to you.”

Malan has edited two journalism training manuals, written and edited journal articles on health journalism, recruited and managed trainers in five countries and assisted in monitoring and evaluating journalism projects. She has conducted HIV media training in the Czech Republic, Haiti, India, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Thailand.

What was your experience in coaching the IWMF fellows?

When you’re a mentor, you’re not a supervisor. You can’t force a fellow to come to you for help. In the past I worked with a fellow who liked to work independently. We met twice and the fellow took very detailed notes.

We discussed all stories in great detail, but the journalist didn’t feel she needed further help. The rest of our contact was for feedback on the phone and I don’t think we will meet again.

Last year I had two people. One from television, who like having feedback, and another who would call to discuss everything with me, even a situation that had arisen at work.

Whether a fellow is receptive to mentorship or not is dependent on their personality and their type of job. For instance, radio journalists who broadcast their work in the form of studio interviews generally require less mentoring than those who need to script and package/edit their stories.

Those who broadcast interviews need help with questions and story ideas, while those who script and package need help with developing scriptwriting skills and the use of natural sound in addition to help with questions.

Sometimes people are sensitive about being mentored and it’s very counter-productive to call all the time. They will send something to me once they are done and I will give feedback. You need to allow fellows to be themselves and tell you what they need or don’t need.

HIV has been well covered. How did you advise the journalists you worked with to come up with a fresh story that would attract the public’s interest?

There is always an original way to tell a story that has been well covered and any story you tell well will be read. We use Google Analytics at M&G,

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

so we know exactly how many people read each story.

Our most-read health story this year was done by Ina Skosana (an IWMF fellow) on how a person with HIV negotiated sexual relationships and dating. It shows that a well-told HIV story will be read. Narrative stories work. As soon as a story is done in the narrative, readership quadruples.

But to tell a human story about HIV requires a range of skills, such as research skills, the ability to track down a case study and excellent narrative writing skills. Many journalists who have worked at daily newspapers have never acquired the skill. They are used to filing 300 word reports based on press releases.

Sometimes it’s taken hours and hours and weeks and months to get our own journalists at the M&G to produce quality narrative-style copy. I’m fortunate – I work with two wonderful, young health reporters at Bhekisisa who are very open to mentoring. But I’m their supervisor too. As a mentor to someone outside your media organization, you often don’t have enough time and clout to work on a person’s style of writing. You are also not supposed to rewrite copy as an IWMF mentor.

Reporters at newspapers are often confined by space.

Is there a way to tell a gripping story about HIV in 300 words? What did you tell your fellows?

If you have 300 words you have to split your story and focus on one issue. People do read long stories if they are well written. The average person might want a short story but I often read long stories on my cellphone if they are well written.

It’s important, however, that you stick to the style of your newspaper – if 300 words is the format, then that’s what you need to work with.

It’s a challenging time to be a journalist with budgets being cut and the industry’s future uncertain. How is this changing the way reporters go about researching and setting up a story?

The challenge one of my fellows experienced at her news organization was the bureaucracy involved in getting travel approved. It could take up to two months to approve a trip for a story. The subjects were ready at the beginning of year, but the reporter had to wait for the admin people to approve the budget, and once it was approved she’d have to leave two or three days thereafter and was expected to have set up all the case studies during that short time available.

How easily could the reporters gain access to patients, for example in prisons and hospitals?

Prisons are tricky and hospitals too sometimes. Our M&G health reporter, Ina Skosana, for example, went

to the Northern Cape. She had permission to do an interview at a local hospital but when she got there, the PR person wanted to sit in on the interview.

There are, however, ways to get around sticky regulations. In Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, Bhekisisa wanted to take pictures of doctors complaining about their work conditions in the theatres. It was a “creative journalism” story – the doctors made posters with their complaints and we photographed each of them with the poster in the theatre. We didn’t reveal their identities – the posters were held in front of their faces. Of course officials weren’t going to give us permission to do this, so the doctors took us to the theatre at the weekend when no one was there. With print there are ways to get into a hospital and a writer can describe what it looks like – you can, for instance, say you’re a visitor to a patient. Many doctors are also willing to talk if you commit to not revealing their identities.

Are patients more willing to talk about their experiences or is there still a stigma attached to having HIV? I’ve heard some fellows say they have had problems but I find this hard to understand. So many people with HIV are willing to talk for print or radio, even on television. You don’t have to reveal identities. If you work in print you can replace a name. It doesn’t lessen the impact of the story. Many people are willing to talk with or without their name. For television it’s also possible to tell a human story (filming hands, feet, shots from the back or darker shots) without revealing someone’s identity. But, I must say, today there are almost always people with HIV ready to talk on the record.

What are the most important lessons you shared with the journalists you worked with?

Journalists don’t work eight-hour days. If you want those hours then why are you a journalist? Journalists work 12-hour days. If you have a passion for journalism you will be fine with working overtime and not necessarily getting all of it in time off.

The perception or profile you have as a journalist is linked to the passion you have and how many hours you are prepared to put into your stories. Skill only develops through passion and hard work. What you want to make of your career is up to you.

If you don’t have time for a story in the week, work at the weekend. I wouldn’t get my stories into the newspaper if I didnt work at weekends. Some journalists don’t have a passion for the job. They leave after three or four years. Often they are not ambitious people. But, in today’s newsroom environments, if you want to keep your job, you need to be willing to put in the hours necessary and you need to show passion.

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MENTOR Gcina Ntsaluba is an awarding-winning South African investigative journalist and expert researcher on the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA). He has worked as an investigative journalist for various newspapers in South Africa, including the Mail & Guardian, City Press, the Sunday, Independent the Daily Dispatch, and numerous other online publications.

Gcina Ntsaluba Investigative Journalist

He was born and raised in the Eastern Cape and learned his trade at African Eye News Service. He is a journalism graduate from Walter Sisulu University in the Eastern Cape and a member of the Forum for African Investigative Reporters (FAIR).

He won the Mondi Shanduka 2009 South African story of the year and the CNN African journalism award for his online publishing. He has been published in two books, one called "Troublemaker" (featuring South Africa's best investigative journalists) and a monograph for the Institute of Security Studies on the 2010 Soccer World Cup stadiums contracts.

He was honoured by the Human Rights Commission and ODAC (Open Democracy Advice Centre) with an award for being the best journalist to practice media transparency and advocacy in South Africa at a ceremony held in Johannesburg.

Corruption Watch

“Journalists need to be able to pitch an idea and follow through with it.”

It’s a challenging time to be a journalist, with budgets being cut and the industry’s future uncertain. Editors are hesitant to let their reporters out of the office for too long. How is this changing the way reporters have to go about researching and setting up a story?

I think journalists are under so much pressure to publish that they end up producing half-baked, sensationalist stories to sell the newspaper. The time pressure is eroding the quality of journalism, especially in print media.

That is why print journalists often get the facts wrong, because they don’t interrogate their work.

Should a reporter approach their editor with a well thought-out time line and a budget?

Yes, definitely, I think those are valuable skills to have. Journalists need to be able to pitch an idea and follow through with it. The biggest challenge with investigating HIV stories was choosing a topic that had not been covered before ... that was difficult. We would meet to brainstorm a couple of ideas but we would also look at follow-up stories. For example, one of the reporters had done a story on HIV stigma and we thought it would be wise to do a follow-up focusing on one of the vulnerable groups in our society, either children or women. He came up with a suggestion of focusing on the youth and how they deal with HIV. Why? Because HIV is not something that we speak about in our social circles, even though we as the youth are aware of it. The next challenge

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

was to find young people living with HIV, to see how they deal with and how their lives have been affected by it. We managed to find two guys who had contracted the virus in their early twenties and they were kind enough to share their experiences with him. That was a major break-through for us so we decided to base that story around those two individuals.

Are editors hesitant to cover stories on HIV? Do you think they have the feeling that everything that can be said has been said? Is there always an original way to tell a story that has been so comprehensively covered? What did you tell the fellows you worked with?

The topic of HIV is well covered and I totally understand why editors would shy away from such stories.

Everything has been said and done. But, having said that, I don’t think journalists really spend the time and resources effectively in looking for other more interesting ways of telling such stories. I believe that there are always interesting new ways of telling a story, no matter how much it’s been covered. The use of multi-media is a great example – using videos, info graphics, black and white photography etc.

Sometimes the issue is also access. With one of the reporters, our initial plan was to look at HIV treatment for prisoners but since we could not gain access to the prisons we had no choice but to shift our thinking towards something else. The idea seemed appealing at first because we never hear about how inmates deal with HIV. The biggest question we wanted to answer was the issue of access to HIV treatment.

Since we could not get access to Sun City prison in Jo’burg, we decided to look at communities in a holistic manner instead of at individuals. The idea behind this was to interrogate the issue of funding for clinics and NGOs serving communities. Globally there’s been a sharp decrease in funding for HIV treatment programmes so we wanted to find out how this constraint in budgets affected poor communities and the consequences of it.

The lesson really is that the story is all over, and if one avenue does not work, then we need to look at other avenues of storytelling.

How did you advise the journalists you were involved with to pitch their stories to an editor? What could they do to give a story a fresh slant and maintain the public’s interest?

Firstly, the journalist would have to read up on everything that’s been published previously on the topic and speak to experts to find out what hasn’t been covered before.

That should give them a fresh angle to the story.

What are some of the challenges you faced as a mentor?

Time constraints. I have a demanding job that requires me to travel sometimes.

Many stories on HIV tend to become statistical stories, told through the eyes of researchers. Is it often a challenge to put a face on the story?

Not really, if the journalist is prepared to go into communities and find people living with HIV then I don’t see why this would be a problem. We need to be able to find the people behind the statistics and give the story a human face.

Are patients more willing to talk about their experiences or is there still a stigma attached to having HIV? There’s still a lot of stigma and most people don’t want to disclose their status. Not enough work has been done to de-stigmatise HIV.

What were some of the common challenges that journalists had?

Time management. Investigative stories are often done in addition to the daily requirements of the newsroom.

The reporter often has to do hard news reporting as well as longer-term investigations. This can get tricky and they need to ensure they are focused and organised.

This often means doing longer-term stories after hours.

What should editors be asking when they are coaching reporters through stories?

They should ask, “Why should we tell this story? Why is it important to tell it and what’s going to change once we’ve published it?” Finding a focus is critical.

Your top tip for editors/coaches?

I have always believed that in order to grow as a journalist, you have to get your hands dirty and by that I mean you have to do the hard yards yourself so you can learn from the experience. Being spoon-fed does not teach you anything.

So, in working with the fellows, I would take care to ensure we were working in partnership. We brain–stormed ideas together and came up with working solutions and timelines for deadlines. I basically helped them to form a structure for their stories and it was their job to fill in the skeleton with meat. I never went out to do interviews with them. They had to find their own people to interview based on their story structure.

It is important for editors to give their writers the necessary support but not to micro-manage them.

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LESSONS LEARNED 2011-2013

Tips for Compelling HIV Storytelling

HIV is no longer a shock story. Journalists need to respond with an approach that will recapture the public’s attention.

Look beyond the obvious. There’s always a new way to cover an HIV story. Keep digging and a new angle will emerge.

A journalist needs to be interested in every facet of life and be able to link issues. Tell your story like you would want to hear it. Believe in your idea, pursue it and incorporate what you learn on the journey with the story

Poor communities are full of human-interest stories. A young grade 12 pupil is looking for a bursary. A shack is burnt. A child is lost. People are struggling to bury their dead. Children are hungry. Someone is looking for the job, etc.

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

Find a way of linking HIV with other matters of

be spent, that way you can follow the money

public importance. Make it exciting and new.

and monitor whether it is being used correctly

People want to read about new things.

or not.

Have a good relationship with your sources.

Stories written in the narrative are more widely

Bear in mind there are two sides to the story:

read than stories heavy in facts and figures.

antagonist and protagonist.

Reporting on HIV is a sensitive matter. A Know the science of HIV and be comfortable with it.

Science needs to be simplified. Turn science into a good narrative.

journalist needs a deep understanding of journalistic ethics and the press code.

Work on your own stereotypes about the disease. You can’t fear holding hands with someone living with HIV.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Doctors and scientists are always willing to give information.

Appearing hungry and willing to suck up information is a good thing.

Develop the ability to use different mediums to tell a story. Journalism has evolved over the ages. Cater for a technologically inclined

Communicate with your editor. Let them know why the story you are working on is important.

Share your ideas with colleagues, friends and strangers when crafting a story and listen to their ideas.

audience.

Reporting HIV stories is not an eight-hour job.

Know the policies and laws around HIV. This

Be prepared to work weekends and late into

makes it easier to know what patients are

the night. Have passion.

entitled to.

Compiled with input from 2011 - 2013 IWMF Understand how HIV budgets are supposed to

HIV and AIDS Investigative Reporting Fellows

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BIOGRAPHIES 2011 Laura Lopez Gonzalez IRIN/PLUS News

2011 Thabile Maphanga SABC News

2011 Zinhle Mapumulo City Press

Laura Lopez Gonzalez began covering HIV in 2003, when she completed an indepth reporting project on HIV among men who have sex with men in Chicago, Illinois, and Cape Town, South Africa, as part of her undergraduate coursework at the Medill School of Journalism in Chicago. She later completed a master’s thesis on counterintuitive links between conflict and HIV transmission in Mozambique as part of the University of Chicago’s Committee on International Relations before returning to South Africa.

Lopez has spent the last five years as a freelance journalist reporting for the United Nations HIV/ AIDS news service, IRIN/PlusNews. Prior to this experience, she worked for various South African Thabile Maphanga has been in the news industry for six years. She is a health journalist at the South Africa Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) Radio News as well as a news presenter on SABC TV News. She started her journalism career as an intern at the weekly publication Echo under The Witness in Pietermaritzburg before becoming a producer for Vuleka Productions in Durban.

print media outlets such as The Star, The Sunday Times and The Cape Times.

While working for IRIN/PlusNews, she has covered HIV epidemics in South Africa, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Swaziland. She has also partnered with organizations such as the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health and South Africa’s Aurum Institute to train fellow journalists in the reporting of clinical trials.

In 2010, she was awarded a Gender and Media in Southern Africa Award for best sustained reporting for her work on forced sterilizations among HIV-positive women in Namibia and pregnancy-related HIV stigmas.

After two years on the bulletin desk, Maphanga became a general radio news reporter. In her time as a radio reporter she was honored with the Tourism Journalist of the Year Award. A few months later she received the SABC Journalist of the Year Award in Radio Current Affairs for a story she covered on virginity testing and the reed dance in KwaZulu Natal.

She joined the SABC in 2004 as a news anchor/bulletin writer on Ukhozi FM, the biggest radio station in South Africa.

In 2010 she was honored with the Discovery Health Journalist of the Year Award for a story related to the doctor’s strike in 2009.

Zinhle Mapumulo is an award winning health reporter for the City Press newspaper. She joined the publication in November. Previously, she worked for The New Age and the Sowetan newspapers as a health reporter for more than six years. Prior to that, Mapumulo worked for several magazines including

Enterprising Women and Garden and Home as a lifestyle reporter. She won the Discovery Best Health News Reporting Award in 2009 and 2010. She has participated in numerous fellowships including the Panos: STOP TB Media Fellowship.

Harriet McLea is a health news reporter at The Times newspaper, a national daily, where she has worked for more than two years. She studied politics, philosophy and economics at the University of Cape Town before obtaining an honors degree

in journalism at Rhodes University in Grahamstown in 2008. While studying, Mclea wrote for two university newspapers, The Oppidan Press and Varsity Newspaper, and read news at the University of Cape Town (UCT) Radio.

2011 Harriet McLea The Times

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Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

2011 Yolisa Njamela works as a senior TV journalist at the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC). She is an award-winning journalist whose career as a journalist spans all media including radio, print, TV and the Internet.

In addition to working as a reporter, Njamela was also a content development executive member for KhumbuleKhaya – a highly successful show on SABC, the premise of which is to connect long lost families.

She has worked as a commissioning editor at SABC Content Hub Drama, where she was responsible for pitching program ideas, evaluating proposals, and developing and writing briefs.

Njamela earned BAs in english and psychology.

Ramatamo Sehoai works as a reporter at Alex Pioneer, a community newspaper in Alexandra, a township of Johannesburg. His job has exposed him to the dire effects of poverty and underdevelopment in his community. He has attended science reporting and investigative reporting conferences at Wits University.

He is currently working on a BA in communication science at the University of South Africa. Sehoai had to confront the harsh realities of HIV/AIDS after losing two of the closest people in his life to the disease, his friend and his cousin.

He has covered several stories relating to the epidemic in his community.

Thandi Skade permanently joined The Star as a journalist in 2008 after completing an internship in April 2007.

received additional media training on interpreting and reporting on clinical trials for cancer, TB and HIV/AIDS.

Skade graduated from the University of Cape Town in 2006 with a B. Soc. Sc in media and writing and politics. She has

While studying she volunteered at an AIDS fundraising shop in Cape Town, South Africa.

David Steynberg studied information science, specialising in publishing, “Tragedy at Grootvlei” at the University of Pretoria from 2002 to 2004. He began working at Farmer’s Weekly magazine as a junior sub-editor in March 2005.

2011, he received two awards, Caxton Magazines Editorial Excellence Awards for Best Feature: Real Life for the story Tragedy At Grootvlei Gold Mine: Ruined Lives and Suicides, and runner up for Writer of the Year.

In May 2007, he was promoted to Deputy Chief Copy Editor, and for the first eight months of 2008 worked as a journalist.

His main areas of interest included legal and business journalism. In September

With a desire to cover human interest stories, he moved to People magazine in August 2008. He has covered issues like paedophilia and rape.

Nastasya Tay is the features and investigative reporter at EyeWitness News in Johannesburg. She is also a freelance foreign correspondent covering the southern Africa region, and has worked with agencies and broadcasters including The Associated Press, the InterPress Service and the BBC. Nastasya’s work spans various formats,

including television, print, radio and stills.

Raised in Australia, Tay was educated at Oxford University and the School of Oriental & African Studies in London.

She worked for various think tanks and advocacy organizations, as well as the UN across several continents before becoming a full-time journalist.

Yolisa Njamela SABC TV

She also pursued a post-graduate degree in communication and media studies at Rhodes University.

2011 Ramatamo Sehoai Alex Pioneer

2011 Thandi Skade The Star

2011 David Steynberg People Magazine

2011 Nastasya Tay EyeWitness News

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BIOGRAPHIES 2011 Fidelis Zvomuya AgriConnect

2012 Zeenat Abdool SABC Radio Channel Africa

2012 Tanja Bencun SABC Digital News

2012 Bianca Capazario The Sunday Times

Fidelis Zvomuya is from Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe. He received a diploma in Mass Communications at the Harare Polytechnic. He joined the department of information in 1995 as a district information officer covering development issues within rural areas.

a television reporter responsible for environment, health and development issues, where started writing about HIV/AIDS. In 2000 he received an M.A. in mass communication and media research from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

In 1997 he started working at the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation as

Zeenat Abdool is an award-winning journalist at SABC Radio Channel Africa.

She currently produces and presents a talk show, African Dialogue, which deals with issues of gender, education, health, politics and environment; as well as a program called @SociallyAfrica, which monitors trending topics on online and social media.

Abdool made her radio debut in 2006 at a community radio station in Lenasia, moving to SABC Channel Africa radio station in 2008. She has covered assignments in Gaza, presidential elections and climate change summits.

Tanja Bencun has worked as a feature producer for SABC Digital News for three years, and as a journalist for 10.

to telling stories, and uses video footage and photographs to enhance her reporting and to engage her audience.

In her current position, she focuses on human interest and lifestyle topics, particularly in the arts and health. She enjoys the multimedia producing aspect

Bencun earned her BA in English and has also studied psychology.

Bianca Capazorio graduated with a Bachelors degree in journalism and English from Rhodes University before starting her career at The Herald in Port Elizabeth.

in Cape Town in 2009 covering general news and also writing investigative and feature stories.

After a brief stint as an English teacher in China, she joined the Weekend Argus

In 2013 she reported from Parliament for the Weekend Argus. She joined the Sunday Times as senior reporter in the Cape Town bureau in November 2013.

2012 Euline Fillis Fokus, SABC

Euline Fillis, current affairs producer for SABC’s FOKUS, has covered a range of stories from human interest to education, health and social economic issues.

In 2011, Fillis was nominated by the ATKV for the best in-depth news insert “Uit die dwelm hel.”

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In 2001, Fillis made her debut as a disc jockey at Imonti FM, in the Eastern Cape.

After completing her journalism studies at the Walter Sisulu University in 2006, she worked as a news reporter at Die Burger. She started at SABC in 2008 and worked as an output journalist for radio until joining FOKUS in 2009.

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

2012 Mukelwa Hlatshwayo has been a junior producer for e.tv’s top current affairs programme, 3rd Degree, and in May, 2012 she accepted a post at The New York Times, working in their Southern African region in Greenside, Johannesburg. She recently won The Discovery Health Journalism Award in the Television Feature Category for her piece, “Hospital Horrors,” which documented the tragic story of three South African families who suffered at the hands of health care workers in

various government hospitals.

Sibongile Mashaba, Mpumalanga correspondent for the Sowetan, began her media career there in 2007.

Previously, she covered crimes and courts for the newspaper.

College, and has also participated in training at the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism. In addition to being a journalist, she is a qualified alcohol and drug abuse counselor.

Born and raised in Swaziland, Hlatshwayo resolved to become a journalist at age nine, and began her Journalism studies at the University of Witwatersrand; however, family tragedies prevented her from completing her degree. She refused to give up her dream, and freelanced for community media and various agencies until she got her break at e.tv.

Previously, he was a senior reporter for the Sowetan and the Pretoria-based Tshwane Sun Community Newspaper group, where he helped to launch a

Ina Skosana has been a health news reporter at The New Age, a national newspaper, since 2011. She recently received a top achiever award for the most aspiring person in her newsroom.

Skosana earned her B.A in journalism at the University of Pretoria, where she co-

Bibi-Aisha Wadvalla, a freelance journalist focusing on science and development, has worked in radio, print and online media. While studying for a Bachelor of Science, she volunteered at a community radio station, presenting a youth talk show. Radio seduced her, and after a stint at another community radio station, she pursued a career in media. She established herself in mainstream South African media by presenting a current affairs programme at SAfm, South Africa’s national talk radio station. She left SAfm to move to Egypt, after being asked to start an internet radio service for Islamonline.net. She later

New York Times

2012 Sibongile Mashaba Sowetan

Mashaba completed Media Studies and Journalism coursework at Rosebank

Sipho Masombuka has been a reporter for The Times since 2011, and has worked as a journalist since 2003.

Mukelwa Hlatshwayo

2012 township edition of Tshwane Sun community newspapers in 2006.

Masombuka studied journalism at Intec College and completed Media Law and Ethics and Election Reporting courses at the Institute for Advancement of Journalism.

founded and chaired the journalism society and served as the political reporter for Kampus Beeld, a varsity installment of the regional publication.

Sipho Masombuka The Times

2012 Ina Skosana The Times

During her school years, Skosana served as an HIV/AIDS peer counselor.

2012 corresponded for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) from Egypt. Her work has appeared on The Guardian, Al Jazeera, SABC, Nature Middle East, IPS, SciDev and Daily News Egypt.

Bibi-Aisha Wadvalla Freelancer

Wadvalla is a mentee in the World Federation of Science Journalists (WFSJ) SjCOOP mentorship programme. A Reuters health reporting fellowship affirmed her commitment to report on science, and further motivated her to dedicate coverage to women's health and HIV/AIDS.

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BIOGRAPHIES 2012 Nomsa Zwane Alex FM

2013 Katharine Child The Times

2013 Thabisa Dyala SABC Channel Africa

2013 Hasina Gori SABC Digital News

Nomsa Zwane, who joined Alex FM in 2009 as a volunteer, worked her way up through the ranks to become a news reader, field reporter, and current affairs producer.

Zwane has been directly affected by HIV/AIDS, losing her parents and other

Child is a journalist for The Times in Johannesburg. After teaching English as a second language in Taiwan and Cape Town, she returned to study Journalism at Wits University. She subsequently interned at Talk Radio 702 and trained students to write and collect radio news at Wits University’s radio station.

Zwane is determined to address the stigma and fear associated with HIV/AIDS in her work as a journalist.

The Times since January 2012.

The IWMF fellowship will give her the opportunity to find middle class health stories which are usually not told. Child believes that most stories about HIV are about the poor but wealthier people who can afford private doctors, stay ‘hidden, as do their stories.’

In 2011, Child was awarded the Anthony Sampson Fellowship to do rural health reporting. She went to the middle of nowhere in KwaZulu-Natal to find untold stories, one of which was published in Mail & Guardian. Child has worked for Dyala is a freelance researcher, producer and presenter for the South African Broadcast Corporation (SABC) Channel Africa in Johannesburg. She currently produces and presents “Let’s Talk About It” – a programme on HIV/AIDS lifestyle, aimed at empowering young people, addressing issues that are shunned by society.

She studied towards a BA degree at Rhodes University and joined SABC Channel Africa in 2006, having been an HIV/AIDS activist and worked for the National Association of People Living with Gori is a journalist at SABC Digital News in Johannesburg, with a passion for new media and radio. Gori began her career as a news anchor for a community radio station while studying towards her BA degree. She went on to produce a daily drive time show and present current affair shows. She also held the position of subeditor for a community newspaper.

Gori holds a Psychology degree from University of South Africa and a Honors Degree in Journalism from the University

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relatives to the disease. Five of her family members are currently living with the virus.

HIV/AIDS in South Africa. She also works for HEARTLINES and has covered issues raised by one of the vocal and active organisations advocating for treatment, support and care of people living with HIV/AIDS - the Treatment Action Campaign.

She is hoping to focus her investigative reports on practical ways of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, on ways of disclosing and dealing with one’s HIV status in relationships and HIV in the workplace. of Witwatersrand. She volunteered at a drug/rehab centre while studying and mentored young aspiring writers over the years. She hopes to focus on humanitarian and investigative journalism.

While working as a producer for the AM Drive on Radio Al Ansaar, she produced a show focusing on HIV/AIDS and the Muslim community with the Islamic Care Line and various other caregivers. She is also a certified HIV/AIDS counselor.

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

2013 Green is a health reporter at Mail & Guardian in Rosebank and obtained an Honours Degree in Health Journalism from Rhodes University in 2011.

Mampoer Shorts. Amy has also written for publications such as Grocott’s Mail, The Springs Advertiser, Ezempilo Health Matters and Health Workers for Change.

An affinity for writing as well as a compulsion to shape the discussion on health issues in a more creative and critical way inspired her entry into the profession.

Green applied for the IWMF fellowship because of the prominence of HIV in South Africa and aims to become a responsible and effective health journalist.

Prior to joining Mail & Guardian, she investigated the abuse of the attention deficit disorder drug, Ritalin, among university students – an expose that was published on the ebook website

Langa is a journalist working for Isolezwe Newspaper in Durban. She completed her journalism diploma at the Durban University of Technology in KwaZulu Natal in 2006. She served as a media intern at Art for Humanity (AFH), a nonprofit organization specializing in HIV/AIDS, women and children’s rights and Human Rights.

She got her grounding in covering health while working as an intern journalist and

Amy Green Mail & Guardian

2013 later a junior journalist with Health-e News Service. She covers a range of beats with a special focus on health issues, ranging from HIV and TB to cancer. She has a regular column that appears in the paper every two weeks where she writes informative pieces with the assistance of medical practitioners.

Lungi Langa Isolezwe Newspaper

Langa joined the IWMF Fellowship to gain more experience in investigating reporting on HIV issues.

2013 Madlala is a reporter for The Daily News in Durban. She studied journalism at Varsity College. After graduating, she started working for The Natal Witness as a weekend reporter and also worked full-time for the company’s community newspaper, The Mirror.

In 2008, she joined The Daily News as a morning shift reporter.

She covers various beats, including court,

municipal, health and crime, and has worked on various human interest stories.

She is passionate about making a difference in the lives of people, especially those who cannot speak for themselves.

During the fellowship, Madlala hopes to investigate the treatment of the virus and efforts to find a cure, write about children who are born with the virus, and cover life in an HIV hospice.

Nompumelelo “Mpume” Madlala The Daily News

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BIOGRAPHIES 2013 Boipelo Cynthia Mere Northern Cape Express (Media 24)

2013 Vuyo Mkize The Star

2013 Yanga Soji The Daily Sun

Mere is an editor at Northern Cape Express in Kimberley. After studying Public Relations, she joined Township Roundtrip Community Newspaper and later Scarlet Dawn Trading which publishes several community newspapers in different districts in the Northern Cape Province. She has also contributed to Umsobomvu Youth Magazine and Northern Cape Premier’s Office Magazine called Puisano.

in Kimberley. As a home-based caregiver, she learned how “the entire community gets exposed to the pain of seeing one of their own being ravaged by this disease”. Working for Township Roundtrip Community Newspaper in Kimberley, she had the opportunity to give HIV/AIDS infected and affected people a voice to express their concerns in writing through a weekly column that was called Positive Living.

She came across the effects of HIV/AIDS when she was a caregiver for Red Cross

Mkize is a health reporter for The Star in Johannesburg. After graduating at the University of Pretoria with a BA in Languages specializing in Journalism, she started off through the Independent Newspapers cadet program.

Although Mkize is new to the health beat, she is fully aware of its importance.

She hopes to improve her writing, investigating and journalistic skills

At The Star, she started off as a general reporter covering a range of stories from court to features and crime before being assigned to health reporting.

Soji is a freelance journalist for The Daily Sun in Johannesburg, the biggest daily newspaper in South Africa. She completed her BA Honors Degree in 2011 at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, majoring in journalism and media studies. After a year-long internship with Media 24 Newspapers, she joined The Daily Sun as an intern.

She has a strong interest in women and children’s rights and aims to change the plight of the voiceless through her journalism.

Stuurman is a digital media producer at the South African Broadcast Corporation (SABC) in Johannesburg. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism from Rhodes University and describes himself as a versatile journalist who has done radio, TV and online journalism. He started off working for NGO media houses such as Health-e News Service and IPS Africa.

Journalism and he was also a finalist in the Young Health Journalist of the Year category. He covered the 5th South Africa AIDS Conference which attracted senior scientists and government officials from around the world.

2013 Siphosethu Stuurman SABC

In 2012, he won a Discovery Health Journalism Award for Best Health Radio

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Stuurman is planning to cover HIV/AIDS in the rural areas, particularly access to medicine, and traditional circumcision vs medical male circumcision (MMC), among many other stories, during the fellowship.

Promoting Excellence in HIV Reporting 2011 - 2013

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Founded in 1990 by a group of prominent U.S. women journalists, the International Women’s Media Foundation is a Washington-based organisation that is dedicated to strengthening the role of women journalists worldwide.

The IWMF believes the news media world-wide are not truly free and representative without the equal voice of women.

The IWMF celebrates the courage of women journalists who overcome threats and oppression to speak out on global issues. The IWMF’s programmes empower women journalists with the training, support and network to become leaders in the news industry.

International Women’s Media Foundation 1625 K Street NW Suite 1275 Washington, DC 20006 202-496-1992 Elisa Lees Muñoz, Executive Director emunoz@iwmf.org

Tel: +27 11 325 5251 Twitter: @frayintermedia Facebook: frayintermedia

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