The Pan Caribbean Partnership Against HIV and AIDS (PANCAP) is calling on the media to take a leadership role in the fight against the disease and to stop using methods that sensationalise and set back the region’s efforts.
“The media can seek to share some of the responsibility for promoting access by holding yourselves accountable to the highest professional standards, Juliette Bynoe-Sutherland, Director of PANCAP, said in her address to the Caribbean media fraternity at the Caribbean Broadcast Media Partnership’s Anniversary Media Leaders Summit held on World AIDS Day in Barbados.
According to a press release from the CARICOM Secretariat, the PANCAP Director noted that the media has an important mandate at this juncture of the Caribbean’s response to the pandemic.
Bynoe-Sutherland offered some suggestions about how the media can assist the Caribbean in reaching the agreed 10th AGM targets of eliminating Mother-to-Child Transmissions, increasing treatment by 80 per cent and reducing new infections by 50 per cent by 2015.
She urged the media to expand their awareness of the issues around increasing access to treatment and reducing new infections, particularly among marginalised and vulnerable communities. “You are poised to use the various means at your disposal to raise awareness and seek to encourage accountability on the part of PANCAP and its constituent governments and organisations,” she charged.
In addition, Bynoe-Sutherland advised the media to use tools and techniques which ensure that their messages are factual and based on evidence-driven approaches. “We must challenge the providers of public service messages or paid advertisers on the content and evidence basis of their messages and avoid having your airwaves flooded with ineffectual and weak messages,” she said.
According to Bynoe-Sutherland, everyone has a part to play in curbing the HIV pandemic and she urged the media to take responsibility for shaping society’s cultural norms and attitudes towards the disease. She opined that the media should not just reflect social values but evaluate them, not just observe what is happening but seek to intervene and provide leadership in the face of injustice. She was confident that the media’s role as a weapon of change will help the Caribbean reach its targets of “Zero New Infections, Zero Discrimination and Zero AIDS-related deaths.”
