PFAW Member,
The coronavirus pandemic is one of the most serious challenges we have faced in generations. The scourge of misinformation in both social and traditional media is quite another. Combine the two, and we have the potential for a crisis of unimaginable scale.
Health and disease experts know how to stop the spread of coronavirus, difficult though it might be, but the spread of fake news about the pandemic is much trickier to head off. And the fact that it’s being encouraged by the highest levels of our government is making it that much more difficult.
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Trump has been twisting the coronavirus narrative to make his administration’s response seem helpful and informative, even though he’s been the source of significant misinformation about the pandemic, and his allies on the right have been echoing his lies every step of the way. The Fox News propaganda machine is touting his lies as the truth,1 and Trump’s far-right allies are peddling fake cures to line their own pockets and sowing panic to further gun sales.
Worldwide disinformation campaigns are spreading out over social media and seeding further confusion about how Americans should respond to the coronavirus crisis. Since the pandemic began to spread in January, almost 80 cases of online disinformation have been found, all of them from a Russian media campaign designed to worsen the effect of COVID-19 on the West.2
We can’t let this crisis turn into an “infodemic,” as the World Health Organization has called it.3
Social media companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter need to be more proactive in flagging and removing coronavirus misinformation. National news outlets must be clearer about what is false and what is fact. And Fox News needs to stop promoting incorrect information that falsely glorifies what has been the Trump Administration’s complete failure of leadership.
Stay safe and healthy,
- Sarah, Digital Campaigns Associate
[1] “On Fox News, suddenly a very different tune about the coronavirus.” The Washington Post, 03/16/20
[2] “Russia deploying coronavirus disinformation to sow panic in West, EU document says.” Reuters, 03/18/20
[3] “W.H.O. Fights a Pandemic Besides Coronavirus: An ‘Infodemic’.” The New York Times, 02/06/20
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