Bruno Giussani is a writer, the European Director of the 
The British daily The Independent today did something quite bold: it published a red front page with just one headline: "No News Today".
Actually, there was a "news", hidden in small print at the bottom, but the sense of it was exactly the opposite of newsy: a reminder of a recurring event that's so recurring that not only it doesn't make the front pages anymore: it doesn't even make the news. "Just 6,500 Africans died today as a result of a preventable, treatable disease (HIV/Aids)", said the text.
In a world of normal hierarchies, that would be top news. But we have left that world behind a while ago, and it took (once again) U2 singer and Africa advocate Bono to get that figure there, red on white, on the front page, after the Independent invited him to be guest editor for one day. British artist Damien Hirst, who designed the page, combined several symbols of life and death, and included (or was it Bono?) a reference to Genesis 1.27. That's the passage that says "God created humankind in his image".
The color of that page is not random. Several of the stories in the section the paper devotes to Africa, including a message by Nelson Mandela, turn around Bono's initiative (Product)RED: RED-branded fashion products - Motorola phones, AmEx cards, Armani sunglasses, etc - where a percentage of the price goes to a fund to help women and children with HIV/AIDS in Africa. This RED edition of the Independent is actually part of the list: half of the revenues from the newspaper will go to the same fund. So it's both a journalistic and moral provocation, and a fund-raising action.
There are several stories well worth reading, particularly Paul Vallely's take on climate change and Africa and his profile of Nigerian Finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
(If you read this past May 16, you may have to look into the archives of the Independent's website).
Seeking other HIV positive people (AIDS, PWA) to chat about dealing with being "POZ", please drop in and visit me on http://www.13km.com ;)
Posted by: HIV guy | May 18, 2006 at 06:29 PM