DOZENS of journalists and journalism academics have branded the coronavirus coverage of Donald Trump’s favourite news outlet, the conservative Fox News, “a danger to public health”.
In an open letter yesterday to network chiefs Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, the group of 74 signatories said Fox News was endangering its own viewers, whose average age is 65 – one of the most at-risk groups of experiencing complications should they contract coronavirus – by broadcasting “misinformation” about the virus.
Their letter read: “Viewers of Fox News, including the president of the United States, have been regularly subjected to misinformation relayed by the network – false statements downplaying the prevalence of Covid-19 and its harms; misleading recommendations of activities that people should undertake to protect themselves and others, including casual recommendations of untested drugs; false assessments of the value of measures urged upon the public by their elected political leadership and public health authorities.
“The misinformation that reaches the Fox News audience is a danger to public health. Indeed, it is not an overstatement to say that your misreporting endangers your own viewers – and not only them, for in a pandemic, individual behaviour affects significant numbers of other people as well.”
The professors and journalists said Fox New reporters had done some “solid” reporting, but this was lost because the network did not differentiate between the authority of an expert and that of a pundit or politician out of ideological loyalty.
They criticised some presenters, including Sean Hannity, for saying Democrats and the media were inflating the dangers of the virus to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax”.
The Murdochs were unavailable to comment, but in an interview with Newsweek, Hannity said: “I’ve got the evidence that I’ve taken it seriously, and I have posted it online, and there’s more to come.”
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