Consider this: As early as October 1986, the Centers for Disease Control reported the “cumulative incidence of AIDS among blacks and Hispanics was more than three times the rate for whites.” By 1996, more AIDS cases were found among blacks than any other ethnicity.

However, a 2004 study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation—a non-profit devoted to researching and promoting public health issues—studied all news stories about HIV/AIDS in the US from 1981-2002. Only a pittance—a mere 3 percent—even mentioned racial minorities. How can this be?

If you tuned in to ABC News on Thursday night, you may have been surprised at the explanation for this given by reporter Terry Moran in Out of Control: AIDS in Black America. “We simply weren't paying attention,” he admitted early in the show. It was a troublesome and frank admission to underscore an hour of fairly decent reporting. However, some key components of this story were not introduced—and that is also disturbing.

Here are the grim statistics: Blacks account for about 13 percent of the American population, but, an alarming 54 percent of all new HIV infections. Nearly 70 percent of the new HIV/AIDS cases among women are black. However, by large, black men who have sex with men remain the largest target group—a recent CDC report suggests about half of black gay and bisexual men in some cities might already be infected. “AIDS in America is a black disease no matter how you look at it,” says Phil Wilson, the prominent activist and executive director of the Black AIDS Institute, who was interviewed in the special.

It's fairly simplistic to assume that network television could digest this epidemic within an hour and “deal with the complex social, cultural, political and spiritual issues around HIV/AIDS without sensationalizing those issues,” Keith Boykin, the black gay political commentator and activist.

However, Primetime tried to be fair and offered five reasons why AIDS was out of control in black America—ignorance among people in power, government failure, the ratio of black women to black men, discomfort around men who have sex with men and higher numbers of sexual partners.

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