up to May 1983 included little coverage beyond the gay press and the San Francisco Chronicle — Lawrence Altman, medical writer at The New York Times had a piece refused in 1981, and Jerry Bishop, a science writer at The Wall Street Journal, had a piece on AIDS refused by his editor in early 1982, whereas the Chronicle hired Randy Shilts to report on AIDS full-time in 1982. Campbell and Conant featured in the earliest nationally-broadcast news reports on the "gay cancer" on June 12, 1982, where Barry Petersen interviewed Campbell, Larry Kramer and James Curran, who led the CDC taskforce, for CBS News. After being criticized for omitting any coverage of a Madison Square Garden benefit in April 1983, The New York Times increased its coverage of AIDS, setting the tone for an increase across print media. One of the most high-profile early pieces introducing AIDS to the heterosexual community was the cover article of the August 8, 1983, edition of Newsweek, showing Campbell and his lover Bobby Hilliard and headlined "EPIDEMIC: The Mysterious and Deadly Disease Called AIDS May Be the Public Health Threat of the Century. How Did it Start? Can it Be Stopped?" — only the second time an openly gay man had appeared on the cover of a mass-market news magazine, albeit with Hilliard identified as Campbell's "friend." The following week, with Callen, Berkowitz, Felson and Turner, he met with Margaret Heckler, Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Reagan administration. They found Heckler to be receptive to suggestions and, when Campbell pushed the issue of delays in people with AIDS's claims for Social Security, she promised to raise it with her counterpart at the Social Security Administration. At the first Clinical Nursing Conference on AIDS, in Washington, D.C. on October 7, 1983, Campbell presented a poster session, "dressed for the part" in white pants and a lab coat. The poster session was designed to help clinicians and nurses understand the message of the Denver Principles, about respect for people with AIDS, rather than considering them as "victims." While at the conference, he attended a talk by an infection control nurse at the National Institutes of Health where he discovered the agency's "maximum awareness" policy recommended the use of electric green "AIDS Precaution" tags on AIDS patients' rooms, blood tubes and laundry. With Artie Felson, he shouted his disgust at the "creepy" policy from