No news is bad news

AIDS: the Global Killer, Channel 4, 27 November at 11 05 pm

Horizon “The Valley of Life or Death,” BBC 2, 16 November at 9 pm

It was 14 years ago that the government urged us not to die of ignorance. Its warnings about AIDS—the tombstone and iceberg television advertisements in particular—were almost apocalyptic and came amid a wave of media hysteria about the disease. Millions were going to die, and everyone and everything—from rabbis to rabbits—were a potential source of infection, the press screamed.

Now millions around the world either have died or are infected by HIV, but no one, certainly not the British press, is holding the front page any more. Despite the enormous global death toll, AIDS has been too slow in its onset to sustain mainstream media interest.

AIDS: The Global Challenge, by photojournalist Nick Danziger, was billed …