In the wake of Donald Sterling, the soon-to-be-former co-owner of the Los Angeles Clippers who’s now infamous for his racist and AIDS-phobic comments against Magic Johnson, advocates are raising questions about the lack of mainstream media coverage of HIV outside of these types of scandals.

“The national media has grossly understated HIV for well over a decade. The last time there was a true flurry was when antiretroviral (ARV) treatment became the lay of the land,” said Janet Weinberg, interim chief executive officer of Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC). “And when the media does tell stories about HIV, they are usually replicated or duplicated or pushed into a little tiny box.”

A recent analysis of cable evening news by Media Matters, a progressive nonprofit research organization that monitors the media, showed that CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have virtually ignored most of the major developments in the fight against HIV/AIDS over the past year.

According to their analysis—which looked at cable news segments between January 1, 2013, and March 31, 2014—CNN had 12 stories about prevention, research and treatment of HIV/AIDS while MSNBC had five stories and Fox News had four. Aside from stories involving HIV crimes, most of those stories focused on the baby “cured” of HIV, on Magic Johnson, on World AIDS Day and on President George W. Bush’s international AIDS work.

“[The HIV community is] seriously talking about ending AIDS, and the media is M.I.A. in raising awareness about the reality of the epidemic in 2014,” said Phill Wilson, founder and chief executive officer of the Black AIDS Institute. “It’s really abysmal given where we are in the trajectory of the AIDS epidemic. We still have 50,000 new infections every year and have had for the past 10 years. That’s an investigative news story right there that is not being told.”

And the issue is more than sheer volume. As stories about advancements in HIV/AIDS research, prevention and treatment have increasingly disappeared from mainstream cable evening news, so have the voices of experts in the field.

In the same study, Media Matters found that of the 21 qualifying stories across the three networks, less than half featured a medical professional, activist or organizational leader specializing in HIV/AIDS, which to many activists is tantamount to not reporting the stories at all.

“It’s 1,000 percent important to have experts with different opinions present in these conversations,” said Jim Pickett, director of prevention advocacy and gay men’s health for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago (AFC). Pickett also is the chair of the International Rectal Microbicides Advocates. “There is a lot of information out there, and the average person isn’t an expert on clinical trials. It’s unfortunate when there isn’t an expert present to make stories understandable.”

And to Wilson, who is often CNN’s go-to expert, it’s also about getting experts who accurately reflect the modern realities of the virus.

“Even in the case of who the experts are, I’m shocked,” Wilson said. “In an epidemic that overwhelmingly impacts black men, especially black gay men, it’s important that the reflections of that reality are in the people who are deemed experts.”

AIDS activists acknowledge that getting mainstream media to care about advancements in treatment, research and prevention is an uphill battle, but it’s one that requires work from all sides. And in the absence of traditional media, advocates have turned to other avenues, such as social media and issue-based listservs to get and share information.

“I think an analysis that only looks at what evening news covers misses the vast majority of people who don’t get their news that way,” said Pickett, who doesn’t watch the evening news in Chicago where he lives because “it’s mostly about fires and shootings.” These days, he gets most of his news from Facebook and Twitter.

“We have a lot of ownership in pushing the media agenda,” Pickett said. “It’s up to activists to cultivate relationships with reporters when stories break, and I think it’s so much bigger than a couple of outlets. If we want a story out there, organizations serving people with HIV or trying to keep people from getting HIV have to think creatively.”

Media visibility has long been cited as a tool to help fight stigma around the virus. In fact, media visibility statistically increases the number of people seeking services and reduces targeted violence toward HIV-positive people—especially among communities of color.

And while Weinberg agrees that much of the information is now being shared via social media in the absence of traditional media, she believes there’s still a certain cachet that comes from national media coverage.

“The press validates that GMHC is the place to go if you need wrap-around services and help finding your voice,” said Weinberg, who saw a bump in people seeking services and donations after The New York Times ran a story featuring its work with young gay and bisexual men of color. “Teaching clients how to advocate for themselves is one of the strongest things we can do.”

So what types of stories should mainstream media be telling right now?

First and foremost, advocates seek more visibility for the communities most affected by the virus, especially gay and bisexual men of color.

“Young black gay men in the United States are the single most at-risk population on the planet,” Wilson said. “If any other population was being impacted to the degree that it is impacting young black gay men, then there would be not 11 stories on CNN but hundreds. We have the potential to end a disease, which we haven’t done since polio, but the media hasn’t figured out a way to nuance that we’re doing better.”

Advocates are also interested in the effect the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. the health care reform law, or ACA) has had on people living with HIV and whether it has made it easier for people to access preventative medicines, as well as treatment.

“I would love the media to cover more prevention stories and follow up on ACA implementation and Medicaid expansion,” Pickett said. “We’re halfway in, and it’s about time to know, ‘How is it serving people with HIV?’ ‘How is it falling short?’ and ‘How is it helping people access things like pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)?’”

For now, those questions remain mostly unanswered by mainstream media.