Wolfsonian talk to focus on media coverage during early years of AIDS crisis

AIDS and the media will be the focus of a public talk at The Wolfsonian–FIU between journalist and producer/director Elinor Burkett and William Darrow, professor of public health at FIU.

Join their conversation about the media’s role in mobilizing the nation’s response to AIDS and its complex relationship with scientists, activists and politicians confronting the epidemic. The event, which is free for Wolfsonian members and students and $10 for all others, takes place Friday, Aug. 24 at 7 p.m.

For more than three decades, since early reports of a new disease began leaking out of San Francisco and New York, American journalists writing about AIDS have been accused of underplaying the first hints of disaster and of distorting its shape, of pandering to scientists and of scientific ignorance, of callous indifference, racism, homophobia, and utter heroism.

This frank conversation between Burkett and Darrow is presented in conjunction with The Wolfsonian’s current exhibition Graphic Intervention: 25 Years of International AIDS Awareness Posters 1985-2010.

Burkett reported on AIDS for The Miami Herald during the critical years when South Florida was coming to grips with the epidemic and authored The Gravest Show on Earth: America in the Age of AIDS, a scorching indictment of the ‘AIDS industry’ for greed, self-promotion, and putting politics over prevention.

During his 31 year career with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Darrow served as the only social scientist on the CDC task force that studied AIDS from 1981 through 1985 and later directed scientific research on the social and behavioral aspects of AIDS as chief of the Behavioral and Prevention Research Branch, Division of STD/HIV Prevention, National Center for Prevention Services.