AIDS WATCH : Publicity Syndrome

Arthur Ashe has AIDS. Does the world need to know? One day after an editor’s inquiry prompted Ashe to make his condition public, most in the press answered yes. Two days afterward, some were having second thoughts. Thus, Narda Zacchino, associate editor of the Los Angeles Times: “Magic Johnson wanted to become an activist on the (AIDS) issue. Arthur Ashe had other plans, and now he’s been robbed of them.”

The argument for making Ashe’s illness news is that the relative health of a celebrity is always news. In 1979, Ashe’s quadruple-bypass heart surgery was big news. There is, of course, a difference: The frequent, de facto association of AIDS with homosexuality, promiscuity and/or intravenous drug use makes it scandalous in a way that heart disease is not. But should that association create a different standard for the press?

Perhaps it should. Meanwhile, we note that each new celebrity AIDS headline weakens the news value of each subsequent headline. Sooner than we think, perhaps, “Arthur Ashe Has AIDS” will subside to the level of “Arthur Ashe Has Heart Surgery.”

The still-spreading disease itself, as distinct from the anguish of those who have it, should remain news and indeed big news. But even though money and research follow publicity, AIDS, at this point, can remain big news without the celebrity assist: Rock Hudson, Magic Johnson, Arthur Ashe. Many in the press clearly look forward to that change just as much as those who feel that the privacy of the Ashe family has been violated.