Arwel, Media and HIV-AIDS at Shimla
Recently, I had the fortune of attending an electronic media workshop held in Shimla. It was conducted by the Cardiff based Thomson Foundation as a part of the European Union–India Media Initiative on HIV-AIDS. The workshop director was the inspirational Arwel Ellis Owen, also from Cardiff , UK . Arwel is the chairman of the British Academy of Film and TV Arts in Whales and in his distinguished career spanning over many decades, he was also the program head of the BBC in Northern Ireland . There were eight participants in this workshop – people ranging from TV news reporters and news editors, radio programmers, documentary filmmakers and graphic artists. During this workshop, we had a chance to reflect upon the kind of coverage the electronic media has been giving to the HIV-AIDS issue in India , which I must say is not encouraging. Around less than one present of our population is estimated to be having HIV, amounting to a very sizable number of around 5.7 million