'But where are our moral heroes?' An analysis of South African press reporting on children affected by HIV/AIDS

Abstract

Messages conveyed both explicitly and implicitly in the media play an important role in shaping the public's understanding of issues, as well as in shaping associated policy, programmes and popular responses to these issues. This paper applies discourse analysis to a series of articles about children affected by HIV/AIDS published in 2002/2003 in the English-language South African press. The analysis reveals layers of moral messaging present in the reporting, the cumulative effect of which is the communication of a series of moral judgements about who is and who is not performing appropriate roles in relation to children. Discourses of moral transgression, specifically on the part of African parents and 'families' for failing in their moral responsibilities towards their children, coalesce with discourses on anticipated moral decay among (previously innocent) children who lack their due care. A need for moral regeneration among South Africans (but implicitly black South Africans) contrasts with accolades for (usually white), middle-class individuals, who, it is implied, have gone beyond their moral duty to respond. The article argues that in each instance the particular moralism is questionable in light of both empirical evidence and the principles of human dignity that underlie the South African constitution. Children - and particularly 'AIDS orphans' - are often presented in the press as either quintessential, innocent victims of the epidemic or as potential delinquents. While journalists' intentions are likely to be positive when representing children in these ways, the paper argues that this approach is employed at a cost, both to the public's knowledge and attitudes around the impact of HIV/AIDS, and, more importantly, to the lives of children affected by the epidemic.

Orphans of the AIDS epidemic? The extent, nature and circumstances of child-headed households in South Africa

“…Popular images of large numbers of young orphans thrust into premature parenting of their siblings and left to fend for themselves are pervasive (Meintjes & Giese, 2006), and are perpetuated by the reporting of the South African media, among others (Meintjes & Bray, 2005; Meintjes & Giese, 2006). …”

School holidays: examining childhood, gender norms, and kinship in children's shorter-term residential mobility in urban Zambia

“…In southern Africa, the characterization of child movement in the media as well as in social policies and programs has been largely negative (Meintjes and Bray, 2005). Still more, images of child vulnerability circulated by aid agencies may in fact produce forms of ‘othering’.…”

‘Low-hanging fruit’: Counting and accounting for children in PEPFAR-funded HIV/AIDS programmes in South Africa

“…Similarly, much work in the social sciences has questioned the assumptions made about the special vulnerability of orphans of AIDS and those made vulnerable because of the illness of their parents and has identified a vast overlap between the difficult experiences of orphans and the large numbers of other poor children in communities affected by HIV (e.g. Bray, 2004; Henderson, 2006; Meintjes & Bray, 2005; Meintjes & Giese, 2006). …”