National news organizations don't tell us about people like Joe Lemieux very often.

What if the media covered serious issues seriously every day -- not just on World AIDS Day?

National news organizations don't tell us about people like Joe Lemieux very often.

Joe Lemieux has been HIV-positive for nearly 19 years. Lemieux has been through a lot in those 19 years:

I remember in the early stages we used to keep diaries and write down how many days we were sick, and there were hardly any days that I wasn't. My T-cells had dropped below 200. They didn't have a viral count at the time. They didn't have the cocktail. They only had AZT at the time. And it was very burdening. I was very tired. I was wiped out.

[...]

The drawing classes that I participated in, they were outlets. Many times the drawings were very angry and, you know, black and dark, and it was my outlet. It was my way to express how angry HIV made me. I remember one time being very angry at God, and I was cursing at God and I was saying swears. I came in one day and I told one of the girls that was in the art class that I was swearing at God, and she said, it's OK, God can handle it, and I broke down crying.

Today, Joe Lemieux works at the Boston Living Center, helping others who live with HIV/AIDS. Medical advances and a positive environment have given him hope that he will “live and see an old age. I feel like I'm going to see 80 and 90 years old.”

CNN told Joe Lemieux's story today because today is World AIDS Day.

CNN told Lemieux's story well, as part of a thoughtful package of reports that aired throughout the day.

But Joe Lemieux isn't just sick today. He was sick yesterday, and he'll be sick tomorrow, too.

Joe Lemieux and 1.2 million other Americans.

Joe Lemieux and 39 million people worldwide -- twice the number living with HIV/AIDS a decade ago.

An estimated 2.9 million people will die this year due to AIDS.

Half a million of them will be children.

For national news organizations -- many of which have published and aired excellent reports today -- World AIDS Day comes once a year. For people living with HIV, for their friends, for their families, for the 2.9 million who will die this year, and for those who have already lost loved ones, it is always there.

On August 17, 1996, my father died of AIDS.

When I remember that day, I often think of a more hopeful one, just 12 days later, when I stood in the United Center in Chicago and listened as President Clinton used his address at the Democratic National Convention to tell the nation:

More rapid development of drugs to deal with HIV and AIDS and moving them to the market quicker have almost doubled life expectancy in only four years, and we are looking at no limit in sight to that. We'll keep going until normal life is returned to people who deal with this.

In a decade, we had gone from President Reagan's statement to the nation (contradicting his own Centers for Disease Control) that a child with AIDS would be an “outcast” who could “no longer associate with his playmates and schoolmates” because of the risk of communicating the disease, to President Clinton's statement about the doubling of life expectancy for those with HIV -- and his promise of a “normal life” for those infected.

And in the decade since, researchers have made tremendous advances in treating AIDS, allowing those infected to live far longer -- and far more comfortably -- than once seemed possible. Medical advances have allowed Joe Lemieux to live with HIV/AIDS for 19 years -- and to lead a life worth living.

Yet the epidemic continues to grow. While treatment has improved, too few have access to the medical care that could prolong and improve the quality of their lives. And prevention lags behind treatment. A World Health Organization report released last month noted:

[L]evels of knowledge of safe sex and HIV remain low in many countries, as well as perception of personal risk. Even in countries where the epidemic has a very high impact, such as Swaziland and South Africa, a large proportion of the population do not believe they are at risk of becoming infected.

But inadequate public understanding of AIDS isn't limited to Swaziland and South Africa. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey released this year found that progress in the American public's knowledge about AIDS “leveled off in 1990”:

With this June marking the 25th year of the epidemic (on June 5, 1981 the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) issued its first warning about a disease that would become known as AIDS), there is an opportunity to reflect on the public's general knowledge about the disease. In the early years of the epidemic, fear and misinformation were pervasive, as researchers worked to first identify and then better understand the virus and how it spread. By the mid-1980s progress was starting to take hold as the share of people who incorrectly thought that HIV was spread through kissing, sharing a drinking glass, and touching a toilet seat began to decline. That progress leveled off in 1990 and has remained relatively constant since. Today, significant percentages of Americans think HIV might be spread through kissing, sharing a drinking glass, and touching a toilet seat -- 37%, 22%, and 16% respectively.

In addition, a majority does not know that a pregnant woman with HIV can take drugs to reduce the risk of her baby being infected (55%), or that having another sexually transmitted disease (STD) may increase a person's risk of getting HIV (56%).

So, what might happen if the news organizations that have done such a good job of covering the global AIDS epidemic today decided to give it greater attention for the next year? Might that increased attention, all by itself, save lives?

Kaiser found that the public understands the need to do more:

Americans' sentiment to do more is also seen on the domestic front with nearly two thirds of all Americans (63%) saying that the U.S. government is spending too little at home to fight HIV/AIDS -- up from 52% in 2004. This willingness to spend more may stem from a belief that increased spending on prevention (62%) and testing (59%) will lead to meaningful progress in slowing the epidemic.

“Perhaps surprisingly, it appears that the American public does not suffer from AIDS fatigue -- they want more done and believe it will pay off,” said Drew E. Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “From Bill Clinton and George Bush to Bono and Bill Gates, to the work of countless HIV organizations and people with AIDS, the efforts of many seems to have helped engage the public.”

So, what might happen if the news organizations that have done such a good job of covering the global AIDS epidemic today decided to give it greater attention for the next year? Might that increased attention, coupled with the public's desire for the government to do more to combat AIDS, lead to increased spending to fight the disease? And what might happen then?

America split the atom and put a man on the moon -- and we did it on a deadline. Why can't we stop the spread of AIDS?

Of course, AIDS is only one of the challenges America faces. For every Joe Lemieux living with HIV, there is a woman living with breast cancer. A family living on the $10,000 a year that a minimum wage job pays. A child without health care -- and a parent who has to decide whether to take a sick child to the emergency room for medical care she can't afford, or to hope that the child gets better. We hope CNN will devote real resources to covering the 46 million Americans without health insurance, but we aren't holding our breath. Similarly, with no Global Truth About War Week, too many journalists forgot that maybe they should present more than one side of the debate about whether to start a war.

Of course, for news organizations to dedicate additional resources to covering the AIDS epidemic, the health-care crisis, and other crucial issues, they would have to make some trade-offs.

We, as consumers of news, might have to go without a Nancy Grace report on “breaking news in the Anna Nicole Smith saga.”

We might have to live without a month or a year devoted to the utterly stupid "War on Christmas" rantings of the deranged lunatics at Fox News.

We'd have to settle for news about what political candidates say they'll do about serious issues -- and whether those plans can work -- instead of learning where campaign volunteers shop for PlayStations or that politicians "look French" or dress in earth tones. News organizations might not have the resources to bring us painfully stupid stories about a candidate's fondness for green tea.

We've seen what happens when media refuse to make those decisions. We're subjected to fundamentally unserious news reports that help elect fundamentally unserious leaders who pursue fundamentally unserious policies.

And that has deadly serious consequences.

Jamison Foser is Executive Vice President at Media Matters for America.