| International AIDS Society Press Conference: Media and AIDS August 14, 2006 |
| The photos where taking form the clip and had being edited by the owner of this site the Light in Gere |
The transcript for the conference courtesy of kaisernetwork.org
It’s now my honor to introduce our first speaker, Mr. Richard Gere. Now when you’re Richard Gere you probably
don’t need a long introduction. I think he’s well known to many. This is the second International AIDS
Conference that Richard has attended, and it’s wonderful to have somebody of his stature and his visibility lend
that credibility to this issue and lend his considerable passion and commitment to HIV and other issues.
As you know he’s an internationally known film actor and dedicated social activist and philanthropist. For more
than 25 years he’s worked to bring attention and effective solution to human problems rooted in ignorance,
injustice and inequality. Through his private foundation, the Gere Foundation, Mr. Gere has served as a lifetime
advocate and supporter of numerous human rights and humanitarian causes. He has since then deepened his
involvement, founding the Healing the Divide Foundation in 2001. This foundation’s mission is to promote
understanding, cooperation and visionary approaches to issues that threaten the welfare and prosperity of people
and communities throughout the world.
That’s the official part of the introduction. I would just like to say personally over the last two years I’ve had the
pleasure of working with Richard in a project that we worked together on in India. I have been impressed by his
commitment, his intelligence, his passion, and his incredible ability to learn and keep learning and keep adapting
the more the more he knows. The more he knows the more committed he has become to this issue. So without
further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce Richard Gere.
[Applause]
RICHARD GERE: I am not worthy. I’ll tell you how I usually see Helene — in my office in New York and she has
a suitcase with her. It’s usually the end of a day, Friday, maybe 7:00 at night. Everyone else has left and it’s she
and I and Bob Kelte[misspelled?], and we’re sitting there talking about things. And we’re just killing time
basically for her to catch the next plane to go someplace else to have another meeting talking about the same stuff.
She’s the hardest working woman in the AIDS business — Helene Gayle!
[Applause]
So this panel is on media. Okay. Sit down in front here if you can. When I started my own explorations on how I
could help this issue, and actually I was essentially a kid, it was in the early ‘80s and the disease was just being
known.
And it was in my community, and I remember that moment when Rock Hudson came out, not only that he was
gay, but he was HIV positive. And at that point he was dying of AIDS. And it was such a shock to the system in
America. This was someone who was in our home. That was someone that we knew quite well for decades of
being a movie star and then a television star and someone who was part of us, deep inside of our hearts. And it
was the first time that, as America, we took it seriously. And his good friend Elizabeth Taylor came out and
started talking on the subject. And there was another icon — such power, again just cut to the center of a culture
very quickly, very directly.
And I think it was in many ways a inspiration to me, what I would do later on is work with people who have that
ability to cut through very quickly and very deeply into the heart of a culture, wherever it is.
Now I’ve been working for the last five or six years in India primarily. But the approach was the same; it’s finding
cultural icons who have that really quick, deep ability to communicate to people in an unspoken way. It slips
through the thoughts and just gets there, hits the mark. And I started to devise a system based on a power
structure of how to change society. Now an icon in itself is pretty useless, it’s just energy. But it’s an ability. It’s a
potential. Now if you marry that with media companies and use intelligence and skill and tell the truth and tell it
authentically, you can be incredibly powerful in messaging and education. Now as we started doing that in India,
and I evolved the system and refined it, I was amazed at how satisfying it was for us to do it, but how effective it
was in the community and how much it was needed in the community.
I think it was like two years ago that the first media conference was done in New York at the UN. And it was
Kofi Anon had suggested this first, and Kaiser Family Foundation organized this. The largest media heads in the
world were at this meeting — debated, spoke with great energy, and made commitments, signed the deals then
of taking on the responsibility of educating the world truthfully,honestly from the heart, and using the skills they
had as professionals to educate the world on HIV/AIDS.
Using that as a model, and at the suggestion actually of my good friend Peter Mukerjea, who’s sitting right here,
we decided to do the same thing in India. And luckily we had a prime minister there, Prime Minister Singh who
was newly elected, who agreed. We had a meeting with him soon after he took office, and he had been speaking
about HIV/AIDS, and had it in his heart, was genuine, and new that it was important to deal with this subject in
an impassioned way and a complete way and a meaningful way. And he very readily agreed to have a massive
media summit at his residence, and he would convene it and he would stay there for the entire time. This came
about. There were 50 media owners, heads, CEOs at this meeting. And I was told there hadn’t been a meeting like
this of media heads since partition of India in 1947.
And it was amazing to me to see the power that this generated in government, in the media itself, seeing that they
had partners. It was print, it was periodicals, it was radio, it was television, satellite, terrestrial. It was the full
range of seasoned CEOs and owners who decided to make the commitment to work on this in a very focused way.
And it was amazing to me to see the power that this generated in government, in the media itself, seeing that they
had partners. It was print, it was periodicals, it was radio, it was television, satellite, terrestrial. It was the full
range of seasoned CEOs and owners who decided to make the commitment to work on this in a very focused way.
that kind of a partnership. But I’m going to emphasize again to my brothers and sisters here and to my partners in
all the work we’ve done. It has to be genuine. There’s none of this that you can do from formula and it works.
You’ve got to feel it in your heart. I have to feel it in my heart or it doesn’t work. Peter has to feel it from his
heart or it doesn’t work. It doesn’t trickle down to all the creative people who actually do the work in his
company. So the kind of private, wonderful, meaningful work is still there in all of us that makes us all connected
in this process, that ability to find something genuine, use the techniques and technology of who we are. I don’t
know anything about doing what Peter does. He doesn’t know doing what I do. But this partnership makes
something larger than both of us.
Now we know from surveys that media in general is where most people get their information. It’s what media
Now what we had to bring to that was the cultural icons part. And it is a vital part of this thing. Media in tells
them — television, radio — but not only pure, there’s different types of communication and education. There’s
intellectual thought process information, which is really important, especially about a subject like this. We must be
rational about HIV/AIDS. But there’s this other communication, which is a different kind and probably the most
difficult, which deals with stigma. It deals with deep-seated emotion. And I think the best way of dealing with
that — it’s very hard is a PSA, I’ve found to deal with that — embedding in story lines, telling stories, getting to
know people over a period of time. And in one of the cases — I think it was a medical show, which you had done
on Star TV, which I think over about nine episodes you followed an HIV storyline. I think you actually won an
Emmy Award for this program as well. But it humanized it in that kind of mysterious way — done with high
quality, done with wonderful actors, good writing, that we felt this character. Then it becomes real, authentic, this
change. It’s not a fake kind of acceptance and a phony kind of reduction of stigma, but an empathy that is deep
and real. And that, to me, is the important thing that media can do and is unique in many ways to what we can
offer.
I don’t know what else to talk about. Is there anything else I should be jabbering about? I’m looking over at Tina
here is that okay, or my wife — my wife stand up — my wife Carrie Lowell, ladies and gentlemen.
[Applause]
Anyhow this is something that I deeply believe in, and I think we have a wonderful panel of people who’re going
to enlighten us all with what they have to say. Thank you very much.
...RICHARD GERE:
Yeah just to follow up with that, I agree with you totally. If we’re going to be doing this kind of work, we must
be very sure that we’re giving correct information. And one of the safeguards that we’ve had in creating the
response that we have is we do have experts. We have legal experts that look at everything. We have people from
the HIV community who also look at our material. We have doctors that we trust look at this stuff to make sure
that it is correct. Now there’s no controls that I know of that are in place in India that control everything that’s
written. Nor is there any recourse, I don’t think, for false statements. But I think one thing that we are proud of
that we have initiated is many newspapers and periodicals now have regular health columns, some of them daily,
about HIV, in which questions are brought up and answered in a regular way. And I think this is the most
important thing is that, again, it’s regularized as discussion.
Now clearly, way beyond any other way, it’s sexually transmitted. And it also allows us, as we’ve found out,
especially dealing with kids, the PSAs that we’ve done with kids, we’ve found that we can use humor. You saw
some of them that we up here, and we found that is a very effective way to kind of break through the PSA barrier
that one has of “oh I’m being taught something” or “I’m being warned about something.” And we found them the
most transformative ones.
The question before too about misogyny and the disempowerment of women is something that we are struggling
with incredibly. We have several PSAs that have been done on this subject, and I personally am not happy with all
of them. I don’t know if our team feels the same way, but we’re struggling with this of how to portray this
problem, make it effective — effective in that we’re telling the correct story, culturally, but also telling a story that’
s going to be effective in terms of transformation. And you’re right this is a very, very deep problem. I think one
of the positive things that’s going to come out of this horrendous pandemic is the empowerment of women, and I
think we have to be very aware of that as we focus on this.
...RICHARD GERE:
It sounds like a print issue to me immediately. I don’t know exactly how to deal with that in terms of the US, but
if you wanted to write to my foundation with that information on that I’m sure we could pass it on to our media
friends in the US who could pick that up as a story.
It’s now my honor to introduce our first speaker, Mr. Richard Gere. Now when you’re Richard Gere you probably
don’t need a long introduction. I think he’s well known to many. This is the second International AIDS
Conference that Richard has attended, and it’s wonderful to have somebody of his stature and his visibility lend
that credibility to this issue and lend his considerable passion and commitment to HIV and other issues.
As you know he’s an internationally known film actor and dedicated social activist and philanthropist. For more
than 25 years he’s worked to bring attention and effective solution to human problems rooted in ignorance,
injustice and inequality. Through his private foundation, the Gere Foundation, Mr. Gere has served as a lifetime
advocate and supporter of numerous human rights and humanitarian causes. He has since then deepened his
involvement, founding the Healing the Divide Foundation in 2001. This foundation’s mission is to promote
understanding, cooperation and visionary approaches to issues that threaten the welfare and prosperity of people
and communities throughout the world.
That’s the official part of the introduction. I would just like to say personally over the last two years I’ve had the
pleasure of working with Richard in a project that we worked together on in India. I have been impressed by his
commitment, his intelligence, his passion, and his incredible ability to learn and keep learning and keep adapting
the more the more he knows. The more he knows the more committed he has become to this issue. So without
further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce Richard Gere.
[Applause]
RICHARD GERE: I am not worthy. I’ll tell you how I usually see Helene — in my office in New York and she has
a suitcase with her. It’s usually the end of a day, Friday, maybe 7:00 at night. Everyone else has left and it’s she
and I and Bob Kelte[misspelled?], and we’re sitting there talking about things. And we’re just killing time
basically for her to catch the next plane to go someplace else to have another meeting talking about the same stuff.
She’s the hardest working woman in the AIDS business — Helene Gayle!
[Applause]
So this panel is on media. Okay. Sit down in front here if you can. When I started my own explorations on how I
could help this issue, and actually I was essentially a kid, it was in the early ‘80s and the disease was just being
known.
And it was in my community, and I remember that moment when Rock Hudson came out, not only that he was
gay, but he was HIV positive. And at that point he was dying of AIDS. And it was such a shock to the system in
America. This was someone who was in our home. That was someone that we knew quite well for decades of
being a movie star and then a television star and someone who was part of us, deep inside of our hearts. And it
was the first time that, as America, we took it seriously. And his good friend Elizabeth Taylor came out and
started talking on the subject. And there was another icon — such power, again just cut to the center of a culture
very quickly, very directly.
And I think it was in many ways a inspiration to me, what I would do later on is work with people who have that
ability to cut through very quickly and very deeply into the heart of a culture, wherever it is.
Now I’ve been working for the last five or six years in India primarily. But the approach was the same; it’s finding
cultural icons who have that really quick, deep ability to communicate to people in an unspoken way. It slips
through the thoughts and just gets there, hits the mark. And I started to devise a system based on a power
structure of how to change society. Now an icon in itself is pretty useless, it’s just energy. But it’s an ability. It’s a
potential. Now if you marry that with media companies and use intelligence and skill and tell the truth and tell it
authentically, you can be incredibly powerful in messaging and education. Now as we started doing that in India,
and I evolved the system and refined it, I was amazed at how satisfying it was for us to do it, but how effective it
was in the community and how much it was needed in the community.
I think it was like two years ago that the first media conference was done in New York at the UN. And it was
Kofi Anon had suggested this first, and Kaiser Family Foundation organized this. The largest media heads in the
world were at this meeting — debated, spoke with great energy, and made commitments, signed the deals then
of taking on the responsibility of educating the world truthfully,honestly from the heart, and using the skills they
had as professionals to educate the world on HIV/AIDS.
Using that as a model, and at the suggestion actually of my good friend Peter Mukerjea, who’s sitting right here,
we decided to do the same thing in India. And luckily we had a prime minister there, Prime Minister Singh who
was newly elected, who agreed. We had a meeting with him soon after he took office, and he had been speaking
about HIV/AIDS, and had it in his heart, was genuine, and new that it was important to deal with this subject in
an impassioned way and a complete way and a meaningful way. And he very readily agreed to have a massive
media summit at his residence, and he would convene it and he would stay there for the entire time. This came
about. There were 50 media owners, heads, CEOs at this meeting. And I was told there hadn’t been a meeting like
this of media heads since partition of India in 1947.
And it was amazing to me to see the power that this generated in government, in the media itself, seeing that they
had partners. It was print, it was periodicals, it was radio, it was television, satellite, terrestrial. It was the full
range of seasoned CEOs and owners who decided to make the commitment to work on this in a very focused way.
And it was amazing to me to see the power that this generated in government, in the media itself, seeing that they
had partners. It was print, it was periodicals, it was radio, it was television, satellite, terrestrial. It was the full
range of seasoned CEOs and owners who decided to make the commitment to work on this in a very focused way.
that kind of a partnership. But I’m going to emphasize again to my brothers and sisters here and to my partners in
all the work we’ve done. It has to be genuine. There’s none of this that you can do from formula and it works.
You’ve got to feel it in your heart. I have to feel it in my heart or it doesn’t work. Peter has to feel it from his
heart or it doesn’t work. It doesn’t trickle down to all the creative people who actually do the work in his
company. So the kind of private, wonderful, meaningful work is still there in all of us that makes us all connected
in this process, that ability to find something genuine, use the techniques and technology of who we are. I don’t
know anything about doing what Peter does. He doesn’t know doing what I do. But this partnership makes
something larger than both of us.
Now we know from surveys that media in general is where most people get their information. It’s what media
Now what we had to bring to that was the cultural icons part. And it is a vital part of this thing. Media in tells
them — television, radio — but not only pure, there’s different types of communication and education. There’s
intellectual thought process information, which is really important, especially about a subject like this. We must be
rational about HIV/AIDS. But there’s this other communication, which is a different kind and probably the most
difficult, which deals with stigma. It deals with deep-seated emotion. And I think the best way of dealing with
that — it’s very hard is a PSA, I’ve found to deal with that — embedding in story lines, telling stories, getting to
know people over a period of time. And in one of the cases — I think it was a medical show, which you had done
on Star TV, which I think over about nine episodes you followed an HIV storyline. I think you actually won an
Emmy Award for this program as well. But it humanized it in that kind of mysterious way — done with high
quality, done with wonderful actors, good writing, that we felt this character. Then it becomes real, authentic, this
change. It’s not a fake kind of acceptance and a phony kind of reduction of stigma, but an empathy that is deep
and real. And that, to me, is the important thing that media can do and is unique in many ways to what we can
offer.
I don’t know what else to talk about. Is there anything else I should be jabbering about? I’m looking over at Tina
here is that okay, or my wife — my wife stand up — my wife Carrie Lowell, ladies and gentlemen.
[Applause]
Anyhow this is something that I deeply believe in, and I think we have a wonderful panel of people who’re going
to enlighten us all with what they have to say. Thank you very much.
...RICHARD GERE:
Yeah just to follow up with that, I agree with you totally. If we’re going to be doing this kind of work, we must
be very sure that we’re giving correct information. And one of the safeguards that we’ve had in creating the
response that we have is we do have experts. We have legal experts that look at everything. We have people from
the HIV community who also look at our material. We have doctors that we trust look at this stuff to make sure
that it is correct. Now there’s no controls that I know of that are in place in India that control everything that’s
written. Nor is there any recourse, I don’t think, for false statements. But I think one thing that we are proud of
that we have initiated is many newspapers and periodicals now have regular health columns, some of them daily,
about HIV, in which questions are brought up and answered in a regular way. And I think this is the most
important thing is that, again, it’s regularized as discussion.
Now clearly, way beyond any other way, it’s sexually transmitted. And it also allows us, as we’ve found out,
especially dealing with kids, the PSAs that we’ve done with kids, we’ve found that we can use humor. You saw
some of them that we up here, and we found that is a very effective way to kind of break through the PSA barrier
that one has of “oh I’m being taught something” or “I’m being warned about something.” And we found them the
most transformative ones.
The question before too about misogyny and the disempowerment of women is something that we are struggling
with incredibly. We have several PSAs that have been done on this subject, and I personally am not happy with all
of them. I don’t know if our team feels the same way, but we’re struggling with this of how to portray this
problem, make it effective — effective in that we’re telling the correct story, culturally, but also telling a story that’
s going to be effective in terms of transformation. And you’re right this is a very, very deep problem. I think one
of the positive things that’s going to come out of this horrendous pandemic is the empowerment of women, and I
think we have to be very aware of that as we focus on this.
...RICHARD GERE:
It sounds like a print issue to me immediately. I don’t know exactly how to deal with that in terms of the US, but
if you wanted to write to my foundation with that information on that I’m sure we could pass it on to our media
friends in the US who could pick that up as a story.
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