Abstract
Misrepresentation in the media portrays women prostitutes as sexual transmitters of AIDS to men. Yet careful study of the available data shows male-to-female transmission of the HIV virus is the overwhelming mode of heterosexual transmission of AIDS. Content analysis is performed to analyze the role newspaper coverage played from 1985 through early 1988 in the social construction of prostitutes as a new target group for AIDS. The results show little concern for the health of prostitutes at risk for AIDS, but rather for their role as possible disease vectors. That women prostitutes were eagerly singled out as a target group despite a dearth of evidence points in large measure to their precarious position in society. And it highlights the impact media has when it acts as an uncritical sounding-board for government and medical press releases about a disease with dire social as well as physical consequences.
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