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AIDS Prevention Needed

NYC Blasts San Francisco's Bay Area Reporter

Compiled By GayToday

San Francisco –New York's Lesbian Gay Newspaper (LGNY) and Aggressive AIDS Prevention, Inc. joined forces Tuesday to take a San Francisco pilot media campaign to the East coast to fight HIV/AIDS/STD infection and bring an accountability focus to journalism and the publishing industries.

The public service ads developed by AAP, Inc. and endorsed by the Department of Public Health and twelve prominent San Francisco AIDS service organization leaders, currently appear in the personal classified ads sections of several San Francisco free newsmagazines and will be customized for the New York community.

(Click to enlarge)
Agressive AIDS Prevention Inc. and New York's Lesbian Gay Newspaper hope this ad will raise awareness of current AIDS issues

The ads contain life-saving information on the basics of HIV/AIDS transmission, prevention precautions, and benefits of HIV antibody testing. A cutout wallet size card with hotline numbers is also provided as an invaluable resource to LGNY's bi-weekly readership of 35,000 and will launch in a special health edition of the newspaper this month.

AAP, Inc.'s ongoing campaign targets free press publications that have graphic personal classified ads that promote behaviors which are considered high-risk for contracting HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

Publishers are asked to run a health advisory, not as free advertising, but as part of responsible publishing practices.

The San Francisco Bay Area Reporter (B. A. R.) newspaper, which publishes high-risk ads and has unmoderated city-wide newsrack distribution, currently refuses to provide any health advisory whatsoever, despite a request spearheaded by AAP, Inc. and co-sponsored by leaders from community organizations such as the AIDS Emergency Fund, Bay Area Young Positives, Black Coalition on AIDS, California Prostitutes Education Project, Instituto Familiar De La Raza, Inc., Native American AIDS Project, New Leaf, Planned Parenthood, Project Inform, the Southeast Asian AIDS Prevention Project, and the SF Department of Public Health.

Troy Masters: "As publisher of LGNY, the newspaper for lesbian and gay New York and a long time community AIDS prevention activist, I applaud the work Aggressive AIDS Prevention, Inc. has done to bring attention to the responsibilities of journalists and publishers who write and publish articles and advertisements."

The San Francisco Bay Area Reporter is currently experiencing an "Adcott" launched by AAP, Inc. as of March 1st, which calls for advertisers to suspend their advertising until an acceptable advisory to balance the high-risk ads is run.

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Unlike many of the San Francisco free papers publishing such ads, LGNY refuses to run any ads in which behaviors that are deemed unsafe are promoted as a matter of principle.

"I will not allow personals advertising in LGNY that solicits unsafe sex, just as I would not take an ad from a gay-basher seeking to lure a gay man or lesbian into a sexual or private situation. I cannot understand how an ad from a barebacker (unprotected intercourse) is all that different. I do not understand how the Bay Area Reporter fails to understand this," says Masters.

"We invite other publishers-at-large to visit our website at www.aggressive.org to see if their readership communities can be served by running the HIV/AIDS/STD health advisory," says Devin Kordt, Founding Director & President of AAP, Inc. "We also ask HIV/AIDS preventionists to hold publishers accountable for their content and organize locally to be heard."

Aggressive AIDS Prevention is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to raising awareness of HIV/AIDS, encouraging HIV antibody testing, and promoting HIV Negative maintenance through Media.