Why didn’t newspapers report that Ritts died from AIDS?

Newsday
Michelangelo Signorile says it was “downright creepy” to see newspapers drag out that Reagan-era euphemism for AIDS — “complications from pneumonia” — for their Herb Ritts obituaries. “Soon enough it was revealed in the gay press (and since has only appeared in a few gossip columns) that Ritts had in fact been HIV-positive for years,” writes Signorile. “His immune system had been sufficiently weakened; HIV infection had left him unable to fight off the pneumonia. In other words, Herb Ritts’ death was an AIDS fatality. And the ignorance of the truth surrounding it signals that, once again, this is a disease that dare not speak its name.”