Twenty years after the Windhoek Declaration on press freedom

Journalism to give Africans health
information: here’s how
By Harry Dugmore
Harry Dugmore is currently
associate Professor and Director
of <strong>the</strong> Discovery Centre for Health
Journalism at Rhodes University’s
School of Journalism and Media
Studies (JMS). In 2009 and 2010,
he was <strong>the</strong> MTN Chair of Media and
Mobile Communication at <strong>the</strong> JMS.
184 | Media in Africa - 2011
Health is one of those areas of life
where individuals can take a lot of
responsibility for <strong>the</strong>ir own choices,
but it is also one where social
circumstances powerfully shape
<strong>the</strong>se choices.
A stark example, all around <strong>the</strong>
world, is that average national
waistline of populations is expanding.
Many people are getting fatter.
This is not only about individual
choice, but also about <strong>the</strong> rise of
environments where multinational
food corporations increasingly
shape our food choices.
From Japan to Brazil to Kenya,
indigenous eating patterns that
have been refined over generations
are fast shifting towards fast-food
and fad-foods. Combined with
satellite TV, a surge in mobile phone
social media use, and urbanisation
more generally, <strong>the</strong>se factors are
producing profound shifts in both
consumption and <strong>the</strong> creation of
more sedentary lifestyles.
Good health journalism needs to
empower people by acknowledging
<strong>the</strong>se contexts. Millions of people
are ei<strong>the</strong>r unaware of just how
dangerous weight gain is to <strong>the</strong>ir
long-term life-expectancy and
overall current health. Or <strong>the</strong>y
are made to feel inadequate and
guilty about <strong>the</strong>ir lack of willpower,
although <strong>the</strong> reality is much
complicated than that. Journalists
working on <strong>the</strong>se areas need great
skill to bring social, scientific and
individual dimensions into <strong>the</strong>ir
stories.
In many countries in Africa, <strong>the</strong>
big health stories have long been
diseases of poverty, malaria and
AIDS. All too often journalism
covering <strong>the</strong>se issues, especially in
terms of <strong>the</strong> transmission of HIV,
places a great emphasis individual
agency. While this is important —
people do of course have choices
— too many stories overtly or
unconsciously blame those who
become HIV positive and, more
generally, disempower people from
making better sexual health choices.
Conservative moralities play out in
media all too often when people
are crying out for straight talk and
information <strong>the</strong>y can use.
“Journalists working
on <strong>the</strong>se areas need
great skill to bring
social, scientific and
individual dimensions
into <strong>the</strong>ir stories.”
In coverage of HIV, while <strong>the</strong>re
has been a shift from <strong>the</strong> overt
moralising that appeared in <strong>the</strong>
1980s, more recent coverage has
(as a very broad generalisation), still
not provided enough understanding
of <strong>the</strong> forces that help propel HIV