By Mel Coffee, University of Kentucky Professor (Mel (r.) is pictured at right with Chike Anyaegbunam)

“Tell your students and colleagues how blessed they are to be able to report the truth.  Tell your people we are praying for them.”

These are the words a Zambian journalist spoke to me in January as my colleague and I were wrapping up two weeks of reporting and storytelling workshops for community and rural journalists in Chipata, Zambia.

I was reminded of those words just last month after another visit to Zambia with my colleague, Chike Anyaegbunam, who also teaches at the University of Kentucky and is a pioneer in behavioral journalism.

Those words were haunting because the man who spoke them did so with wide-open eyes and tears flowing down his face.

I still remember the grip he had on my arm. And I remember how his passion served as a reminder of the duty we have as journalists to report with a purpose.

I have always encouraged my students and my newsroom colleagues to look at journalism as a way of changing the world. I believe journalists do just that when they report responsibly on issues important in their community, no matter how local or global the community is.

But what is so evident in sub-Saharan Africa is that journalists who are reporting on HIV and AIDS are not just trying to change their world, they are trying to save it. Literally.


Mel, bottom left, poses with several facilitators and participants in the workshop.

Nearly 15 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa is living with AIDS and HIV.  That number more than doubles if you consider other factors that elude surveys.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Fund, reports that in Zambia alone more than 710,000 orphans are living with HIV or AIDS, and that number is expected to eclipse one million next year.

Life expectancy there is in the late 30s.  So, when we hear the word “crisis” in news headlines here in the U.S., sometimes it seems pale compared with what journalists there are facing.
   
Reports from the Zambia Institute of Mass Communication, or ZAMCOM, show that years of reporting on HIV and AIDS seem to have made very little impact.

With that in mind, a partnership with ZAMCOM and the University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Telecommunications, sponsored by the American International Health Alliance, is underway to provide training for more effective reporting through storytelling: taking ordinary voices and turning them into heroes and role models. 

The idea behind the training is that a reporter should not only report on what is happening and why it is happening, but that the content should be engaging enough to make people react, and, where appropriate, change behaviors.


Mel, center, chats with two female participants of the program in Kitwe, Zambia.

It’s a lesson I find many local news outlets here at home have shelved for various reasons including time constraints and too few financial and staffing resources.  But this experience is a reminder we all could use a refresher, if not a renewed challenge.

 “I’ve learned one important skill during this workshop.  It’s important to connect the listener with the interviewee, where you let the person tell their own story,” says Catherine Phiri, presenter and reporter with Radio Icengelo, a community radio station in Kitwe, Zambia. “The media have power to change the way people think and the way they analyze issues.  I realized I can be that person who can help people concerning various happening in the community.”

To be sure, it takes more than making people aware and giving them information.  We know the best stories are stories about people. Reporters want that personal, emotional sound bite or interview that gives the viewer insight into that one person.  But what about the kind of reporting that forces the reporter to step out of the way and lets real people, in essence, become reporters through telling their own stories?  Really giving voice to the voiceless?

One weekly newspaper in Gaborone, Botswana, “The Voice”, decided to change its entire approach to news.  It frowns on presenting news from an official perspective, and instead, is hyper-focused on ordinary people.  The publisher acknowledges it is more of an in-your-face tabloid, but he says it gets people talking to each other through the newspaper.

By contrast, “Mmegi”, a self-described “serious” daily, also focuses on social, economic and political issues.

Editor Gideon Nkala says after the newspaper started telling stories from people’s perspectives, the stories started coming to them. People who had stories to share came to the newspaper to tell them.

“They realize if they talk to the media about themselves, they will help not just themselves, but someone can learn from their experiences, their struggles with whatever they have been going through,” Nkala said. “That has been a great achievement.  I cannot attribute that to the media alone, but we have played a part.”

Other entities are now getting involved, and the early feedback seems positive.   The Media Institute of Southern Africa, or MISA, Botswana, is in touch with community leaders, who are now holding forums and helping people get the help they need to live with and prevent HIV infections.     

Nkala and others at media outlets, especially radio, describe it not so much as a success story, but as an obligation. 

“We see ourselves as the newspaper that prints people’s conscience,” said Nkala.  “If you want to maintain that role, we can only do that if we engage in our society, in issues that are of concern to them.  We have to be better in our reportage.”

The pressures of profit also factor in, especially because reaching people in remote areas is expensive, and advertising dollars are tight.

Nkala, and others at just about every other media house we visited, say such pressure creates a new challenge of revamping their operations.  Nkala says content is not negotiable, at any cost. 

 “It’s an obligation,” he said. “If a lot of our people are perishing, we cannot be here thinking that we have any other lofty mandate than saying to our people this is where we are now, and we are going to invest in this.  We have to invest in this.”  

--Mel Coffee is an Assistant Professor in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky.  Mel spent 16 years in television news before teaching.