The HIV/AIDS Epidemic and Public Broadcasting

¹ James T. Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush vs. Gore (New York: Oxford University Press), 180.

² Donna L. Wise, "Challenging Sexual Preference Discrimination in Private Employment," Ohio State Law Journal 41, no. 2 (1980), 501.

³ Susan Sontag, AIDS and Its Metaphors (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1989), 114.

⁴ Catharine I. Paules, Robert W. Eisinger, Hilary D. Marston, Anthony S. Fauci, "What Recent History Has Taught Us about Responding to Emerging Infectious Disease Threats," Annals of Internal Medicine 167, issue 11 (December 5, 2017): 805-11, https://doi.org/10.7326/M17-2496.

⁵ Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 766.

⁶ Shilts, And the Band Played On, 848.

⁷ Ibid, 849.

⁸ Ibid, 849.

⁹ James Kinsella, Covering the Plague: AIDS and the American Media (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 24.

¹⁰ Kinsella, Covering the Plague, 1.

¹¹ Kinsella, Covering the Plague, 4.

¹² Dennis Altman, AIDS and the New Puritanism (London: Pluto Press, 1986), 67.

¹³ Paula A. Treichler, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), 250.

¹⁴ "U.S. Statistics," HIV.gov (June 2, 2021), https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/statistics.

¹⁵ Victoria A. Cargill and Valerie E. Stone, "HIV/AIDS: A Minority Health Issue," Medical Clinics of North America 89 (2005), 900.

¹⁶ Kinsella, Covering the Plague, 4.

¹⁷ Kevin Williams, "Dying of Ignorance? Journalists, News Sources, and the Media Reporting of HIV/AIDS," in Social Policy, the Media and Misrepresentation, ed. Bob Franklin (New York: Routledge, 1999), 70.

¹⁸ Centers for Disease Control, "Pneumocystisis Pneumonia," MMWR (June 5, 1981), https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/lmrk077.htm.

¹⁹ Sarah Schulman, Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), 50; Shilts, And the Band Played On, 150.

²⁰ Lawrence K. Altman, "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals," New York Times, July 3, 1981.

²¹ Paul Farmer, AIDS and Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019), 211.

²² Kaposi's Sarcoma and Related Opportunistic Infections: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Health and the Environment of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives, 97th congress, 2nd sess., April 13, 1982.

²³ Shilts, And the Band Played On, 352; Harry Nelson, "Epidemic Affecting Gays Now Found in Heterosexuals," Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1982.

²⁴ Treichler, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic, 50.

²⁵ Ramani Durvasula, "A History of HIV/AIDS in Women: Shifting Narrative and a Structural Call to Arms," Psychology and AIDS Exchange Newsletter (American Psychological Association), March 2018.

²⁶ Centers for Disease Control, "Epidemiologic Notes and Reports Immunodeficiency among Female Sexual Partners of Males with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) – New York," MMWR 31, no. 52, January 7, 1983: 697-98, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001221.htm.

²⁷ Erik Eckholm, "Poll Finds Many AIDS Fears That the Experts Say Are Groundless," New York Times, September 12, 1985, https://www.nytimes.com/1985/09/12/us/poll-finds-many-aids-fears-that-the-experts-say-are-groundless.html.

²⁸ Robert R. Waller and Lynn W. Lisella, "National AIDS Hotline: HIV and AIDS Information Service Through a Toll-Free Telephone System," Public Health Reports 106, no. 6 (1991), https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/63657.

²⁹ Karen A. Bonuck and Ernest Drucker, "Housing Issues of Persons with AIDS," Journal of Urban Health: Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, vol. 75, no. 1 (March 1998).

³⁰ Anthony Michael Petro, After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 29.

³¹ "Hudson Getting French Drug for AIDS," Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1985, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-07-26-mn-4974-story.html.

³² Bob Secter, "Senate Votes to Double Funds to Combat AIDS," Los Angeles Times, October 23, 1985.

³³ Colin Norman, "AIDS Therapy: New Push for Clinical Trials," Science, vol. 230, no. 4732 (December 20, 1985), https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.2999981.

³⁴ Kinsella, Covering the Plague, 4.

³⁵ "Gays and the Mainstream Press," Outweek (New York), October 15, 1989, http://www.outweek.net/pdfs/ow_17.pdf.

³⁶ Kinsella, Covering the Plague, 45.

³⁷ Patterson, Restless Giant, 179.

³⁸ Williams, "Dying of Ignorance?" 69; Kinsella, Covering the Plague, 45.

³⁹ John Tulloch and Deborah Lupton, Television, AIDS and Risk: A Cultural Studies Approach to Health Communication (Allen & Unwin, 1997), 34.

⁴⁰ Kinsella, Covering the Plague, 144.

⁴¹ Jo Ann Ferrell, "AIDS Carrier Reportedly Leaves Town after Spreading Disease," Call and Post (Cleveland, OH), September 12, 1985.

⁴² René Esparza, "Black Bodies on Lockdown: AIDS Moral Panic and the Criminalization of HIV in Times of White Injury," The Journal of African American History (2019), 272.

⁴³ Martha Bayles, "Documentary: A Case of AIDS," Wall Street Journal, March 24, 1986; Howard Rosenberg, "'Frontline' AIDS Controversy," Los Angeles Times, March 27, 1986.

⁴⁴ Brian Jones, "Bridges: The 'Hooker' Who Said No: PBS Documentary Based on a Hoax?" Bay Area Reporter (San Francisco, CA), March 27, 1986, https://archive.org/details/BAR_19860327/mode/2up.

⁴⁵ Esparza, 251.

⁴⁶ Douglas Crimp, "Portraits of People with AIDS," in Cultural Studies, ed. Cary Nelson, Lawrence Grossberg, and Paula Treichler (New York: Taylor & Francis, 2013), 120.

⁴⁷ Kevin Roderick, "Questions on Prop. 64: Clearing the Confusion," Los Angeles Times, October 29, 1986.

⁴⁸ Robert Steinbrook, "Prop. 64 Would Hurt AIDS Studies, Researchers Warn," Los Angeles Times, September 24, 1986.

⁴⁹ "14 San Francisco Sex Clubs Told to Close to Curb AIDS," New York Times, October 10, 1984, https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/10/us/14-san-francisco-sex-clubs-told-to-close-to-curb-aids.html.

⁵⁰ Irvin Molotsky, "Congress Passes Compromise AIDS Bill," New York Times, October 14, 1988, https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/14/us/congress-passes-compromise-aids-bill.html.

⁵¹ Chris Bull, "Congress passes $1 billion AIDS bill—no confidentiality," Gay Community News (Boston, MA), October 23-29, 1988, https://repository.library.northeastern.edu/downloads/neu:m046j9684?datastream_id=content.

⁵² Although treatment for HIV had become being manageable in the 2000s and the virus by that time was determined to be untransmissible with medication, HIV wasn’t removed from the list of communicable diseases that disqualify immigrants from coming into the U.S. until 2009.

⁵³ Dennis Altman, "HIV, Homophobia, and Human Rights," Health and Human Rights 2 (1996), 16.

⁵⁴ Jerry Cheslow, "50 Radio Stations to Join in an AIDS Broadcast," New York Times, May 15, 1988.

⁵⁵ Schulman, Let the Record Show, 101.

⁵⁶ Marlene Cimons and Victor F. Zonana, "Manufacturer Reduces Price of AZT by 20%," Los Angeles Times, September 19, 1989, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-09-19-mn-111-story.html.

⁵⁷ Kinsella, Covering the Plague, 75, 122.

⁵⁸ United States Public Health Service, Office of the Surgeon General; and Centers for Disease Control, “Understanding AIDS: What Do You Really Know about AIDS?” (1988), https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/6927.

⁵⁹ Heather G. Miller, Charles F. Turner, and Lincoln E. Moses, eds. (Committee on AIDS Research and the Behavioral, Social, and Statistical Sciences, Commission on the Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, National Research Council), AIDS: The Second Decade (Washington: National Academies Press, 1990), 1, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK235359/.

⁶⁰ Altman, 18.

⁶¹ Phill Wilson, “Rising Sun?” POZ, October 1, 1994, https://www.poz.com/article/Rising-Sun-16349-4703.

⁶² Joseph P. Kahn, “‘AIDS Quarterly’ Draws Angry Reactions,” Boston Globe, October 17, 1989.

⁶³ Kahn, “‘AIDS Quarterly’ Draws Angry Reactions.”

⁶⁴ Lisa Stodder, “Claude Rhodes: Outreach Worker Fought AIDS Among Addicts,” University of Illinois Chicago, Staff Advisory Council, https://sac.uic.edu/claude-rhodes/.

⁶⁵ Kahn, “‘AIDS Quarterly’ Draws Angry Reactions.”

⁶⁶ Kahn, “‘AIDS Quarterly’ Draws Angry Reactions.”

⁶⁷ Richard A Knox, “A Powerfully Human ‘AIDS Quarterly,’” Boston Globe, September 26, 1989.

⁶⁸ William Hoynes, Public Television for Sale: Media, the Market, and the Public Sphere (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 126.

⁶⁹ Schulman, Let the Record Show, 65.

⁷⁰ Vito Russo, “Why We Fight,” 1988, ACT UP, https://actupny.org/documents/whfight.html.

⁷¹ Douglas Crimp, “Before Occupy: How AIDS Activists Seized Control of the FDA in 1988,” Atlantic, December 6, 2011, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/before-occupy-how-aids-activists-seized-control-of-the-fda-in-1988/249302/.

⁷² Daniel J. O’Shea, “AIDS Activism,” in Mental Health Practitioner’s Guide to HIV/AIDS, ed. Sana Loue (New York: Springer, 2013), 85.

⁷³ Schulman, Let the Record Show, 218.

⁷⁴ Todd S. Purdum, “Cardinal Says He Won’t Yield to Protests,” New York Times, December 12, 1989.

⁷⁵ Bullert, Public Television, 127.

⁷⁶ Bullert, Public Television, 123, 118.

⁷⁷ Bullert, Public Television, 129.

⁷⁸ Bullert, Public Television, 129.

⁷⁹ Bullert, Public Television, 130.

⁸⁰ Sharon Bernstein, “PBS Network Hit by Charges of Censorship,” Los Angeles Times, August 14, 1991.

⁸¹ Bullert, Public Television, 133.

⁸² Victor Zonana, “AIDS Activist Finds Creative Outlet in ‘Church,’” Los Angeles Times, September 6, 1991.

⁸³ Peter M. Nardi and Ralph Bolton, “Gay-Bashing: Violence and Aggression against Gay Men and Lesbians,” Advances in Psychology, 76 (1991), 350.

⁸⁴ George Weigel, “KCET’S Action: the Antithesis of Freedom,” Los Angeles Times, September 17, 1991.

⁸⁵ Sharon Bernstein, “Views Split on KCET Airing of ‘Stop the Church,’” Los Angeles Times, September 8, 1991; Sharon Bernstein, “KCET Pays Price in Flap With Church,” Los Angeles Times, October 10, 1991.

⁸⁶ Schulman, Let the Record Show, 1003.

⁸⁷ Ann Northrop, interview by Sarah Schulman, May 28, 2003, ACT UP Oral History Project, https://actuporalhistory.org/numerical-interviews/027-ann-northrop?rq=ann%20northrop

⁸⁸ “AIDS Protesters Enter Sets of 2 Newscasts,” New York Times, January 23, 1991, https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/23/arts/aids-protesters-enter-sets-of-2-newscasts.html.

⁸⁹ Centers for Disease Control, “Notice to Readers Clinical Update: Impact of HIV Protease Inhibitors on the Treatment of HIV-Infected Tuberculosis Patients with Rifampin,” MMWR, October 25, 1996, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00044186.htm.

⁹⁰ Joseph Kagaayi and David Serwadda, “The History of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic in Africa,” Current HIV/AIDS Report 13 (August 2016): 187-93, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11904-016-0318-8.

⁹¹ Sanyu A. Majola, “AIDS in Africa: Progress and Obstacles,” Current History, vol. 116, no. 790 (May 2017): 170-75, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48614258.

⁹² Susan Moeller, “Coverage of AIDS in Africa: The Media Are Silent No Longer,” Neiman Reports (Fall 2000), September 15, 2000, https://niemanreports.org/coverage-of-aids-in-africa-the-media-are-silent-no-longer/

⁹³ Moeller, “Coverage of AIDS in Africa.”

⁹⁴ Mollyann Brodie, et al. “AIDS at 21: Media Coverage of the HIV Epidemic 1981-2002,” supplement to Columbia Journalism Review (March/April 2004): 1, https://www.kff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/aids-at-21-media-coverage-of-the-hiv-epidemic-1981-2002-supplement-to-the-march-april-2004-issue-of-cjr.pdf.

⁹⁵ Lawrence K. Altman, “AIDS in Africa: A Pattern of Mystery,” New York Times, November 8, 1985, https://www.nytimes.com/1985/11/08/world/aids-in-africa-a-pattern-of-mystery.html?searchResultPosition=19.

⁹⁶ “World AIDS Day,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, last reviewed October 6, 2022, https://www.cdc.gov/worldaidsday/index.html.

⁹⁷ “1990s HIV/AIDS Timeline,” American Psychological Association, March 2017, https://www.apa.org/pi/aids/youth/nineties-timeline.

⁹⁸ Erik Eckholm and John Tierney, “AIDS in Africa: A Killer Rages On,” New York Times, September 16, 1990, https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/16/world/aids-in-africa-a-killer-rages-on.html?searchResultPosition=16.

⁹⁹ “Fred de Sam Lazaro,” PBS NewsHour, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/author/fred-de-sam-lazaro.

¹⁰⁰ Emily Bass, To End a Plague: America’s Fight to Defeat AIDS in Africa (New York: PublicAffairs, 2021), 27.

¹⁰¹ Bass, To End a Plague, 56.

¹⁰² “An Unprecedented Problem: The Clinton Administration and HIV/AIDS in the United States,” Clinton Digital Library, https://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/an-unprecedented-problem-the-clinton-administration-and-hiv/aids-in-the-united-states.

¹⁰³ POV, season 16, ep. 8, “State of Denial,” directed by Elaine Epstein, aired September 16, 2003, PBS https://www.kanopy.com/en/fairfaxlibrary/video/139751.

¹⁰⁴ Simphiwe Sesanti, “Thabo Mbeki’s ‘AIDS Denialism,’” Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 65, no. 3 (156) (September 2018): 27, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48564454.

¹⁰⁵ Bass, To End a Plague, 33.

¹⁰⁶ Scholar Simphiwe Sesanti has argued that Mbeki’s statements and policy decisions about AIDS should be viewed in the context of pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance. See Sesanti, “Thabo Mbeki,” 47-48.

¹⁰⁷ “Our Story: Twenty-five Years of Global Health Milestones,” International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, https://iavi25.iavi.org/our-story/.

¹⁰⁸ “The United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” U.S. Department of State, https://www.state.gov/pepfar/.

¹⁰⁹ Bass, To End a Plague, 3.

¹¹⁰ Clip, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 2003-02-10, NewsHour Productions, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed April 19, 2024, https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-507-086348gz8h?start=2474.73&end=3377.3.

¹¹¹ Bass, To End a Plague, 125.

¹¹² “Global War on Terror,” George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.georgewbushlibrary.gov/research/topic-guides/global-war-terror.

¹¹³ Bass, To End a Plague, 321.

¹¹⁴ James Gruber, “Welcome to Phase Three of the Global Financial Crisis,” Forbes, January 29, 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesgruber/2014/01/29/welcome-to-phase-three-of-the-global-financial-crisis/?sh=45bd58244a62.

¹¹⁵ Bass, To End a Plague, 387.

¹¹⁶ Peter Sands, “COVID-19 Must Transform the Definition of Global Health Security,” The Global Fund blog, November 19, 2020, https://www.theglobalfund.org/en/opinion/2020/2020-11-19-covid-19-must-transform-the-definition-of-global-health-security/

¹¹⁷ Kevin M. De Cock, et al., “Reflections on 40 Years of AIDS,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, vol. 27, no. 6 (June 2021), https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/6/21-0284_article.

¹¹⁸ “With new infections 1 million higher than the 2020 target, UNAIDS and partners convene emergency meeting on HIV prevention,” UNAIDS, https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2022/october/20221010_stop-new-infections.

¹¹⁹ Ashley Kirzinger, Lunna Lopes, Bryan Wu, and Mollyanne Brodie, “KFF Health Tracking Poll – March 2019: Public Opinion on the Domestic HIV Epidemic, Affordable Care Act, and Medicare-for-all,” Kaiser Family Foundation, March 26, 2019, https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/kff-health-tracking-poll-march-2019/.

¹²⁰ Centers for Disease Control, “HIV Among Gay and Bisexual Men,” https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc_49807_DS1.pdf.

¹²¹ Liz Hamel, Jamie Firth, Tina Hoff, Jennifer Kates, Sarah Levine, and Lindsey Dawson, “HIV/AIDS in the Lives of Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States,” Kaiser Family Foundation, September 25, 2014, https://www.kff.org/hivaids/report/hivaids-in-the-lives-of-gay-and-bisexual-men-in-the-united-states/.

¹²² Francisco Illanes-Álvarez, Denisse Márquez-Ruiz, Mercedes Márquez-Coello, Sara Cuesta-Sancho, José Antonio Girón-González, “Similarities and Differences between HIV and SARS-CoV-2,” International Journal of Medical Sciences, vol. 18, no. 3 (2021), 849.

¹²³ “HIV/AIDS: A Minority Health Issue,” The Medical Clinics of North America, vol. 89 (2005), 900.

¹²⁴ Timothy Bella, “Texas AG Says He’d Defend Sodomy Law if Supreme Court Revisits Ruling,” Washington Post, June 29, 2022., https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/29/texas-sodomy-supreme-court-lawrence-paxton-lgbtq/.

¹²⁵ Rachel Treisman, “As Monkeypox Spreads, Know the Difference between Warning and Stigmatizing People,” NPR, July 26, 2022, https://www.npr.org/2022/07/26/1113713684/monkeypox-stigma-gay-community.

¹²⁶ Stephen Tropiano, “The Time of Our Lives: In the Life – America’s LGBTQ News Magazine,” UCLA Library, Film & Television Archive, https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/collections/inthelife/history/time-of-our-lives.

¹²⁷ B. J. Bullert, Public Television, 94.