ONE Campaign and the News Media

Although the ONE campaign hasn't received much national or international news coverage, it does have campaigns that cross borders for various issues that have received attention at national and international levels. The latest campaign received attention from various celebrities that were promoting the beginning of the end of AIDS by 2015 campaign through a video that can be found on their website. They also sent an email out calling attention to their video that took supporters to the site to watch it. Many celebrities have been known to endorse the ONE Campaign already, like Bono who co-founded the organization, bring large amount of public attention to them. Although many times, the attention is not from large news media outlets or even for the actual campaign itself, the attention it receives is crucial to spreading awareness about the issues they are campaigning for. For example, asking people to help end global poverty or put an end to AIDS might sounds a little far fetched and unrealistic, not something that news media can "sell" or that would put people in the "buying mood" but attach a celebrities name to it, and it automatically draws more attention to the issue. In the case of the ONE Campaign, any attention to the issue is good attention because it allows people to delve more into these important items that can eventually lead to social change.

One important milestone for the ONE Campaign was getting attention from then presidential candidate Barack Obama. The ONE Campaign created a petition to have Obama, if elected, express his commitment to fight global poverty and support an FY2010 budget request that would support his commitments to help end global poverty. The following was said by Barack Obama at his inauguration speech on January 20th, 2009:

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.


This campaign was a success and even though the news media that was covering the president's speech wasn't there for the ONE Campaign specifically, the issue received national coverage through a large political figure on such a monumental day.