June 2: It’s just after midnight. The ABC news program Nightline has just ended. Jim Wooten, a fine writer and insightful correspondent, narrated a half-hour report on Nkosi Johnson, the AIDS orphan I have just produced a program about. I was glad to see the story finally get substantial airtime since I have been complaining about its absence on the airwaves.

Earlier in the day, Nightline Executive Producer Leroy Sievers revealed that they had been waiting “for Nkosi Johnson to die for months. This broadcast was shot and edited months ago. Nkosi, who had AIDS, finally went into a coma last winter after fighting the disease all of his short life. Every day, reports came from South Africa saying he had only a few hours to live, he would surely pass away that day or the next. Like everything else he did in life, Nkosi fought death with more strength and courage than anyone would have expected from such a small boy. He became the symbol, and the spokesman, for the millions of Africans who suffer from AIDS.”

It was certainly an impressive and moving portrait. It made me envious of the network’s resources and impressed that they would give the story so much air time. An excerpt had earlier run on World News Tonight. (In contrast, and true to form, the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer turned down our Nkosi video.) But something bugged me about the Nightline show. It even pissed me off.

In many ways Nightline did what American TV does so well — individual storytelling, profiling one person’s tragedy. But Nkosi was not just a “poster boy” for AIDS as Wooten put it, but a spokesperson for AIDS orphans, the growing crisis within the AIDS crisis. The word orphan was never mentioned. The context of how many children like Nkosi who have lost their parents never cited. By narrowing its focus, it elicited sympathy about one child’s fight for life but did not really connect his experience to the millions of other African kids who have not been lucky enough to be taken in by a white middle class family.

Nightline is not alone is missing the AIDS orphans story. It was just painful to not see it even mentioned even after Nkosi became the voice for so many voiceless children who are infected and affected by AIDs. I respect Jim Wooten, but I wonder if he has given this important connection any thought?