Blog: Long live local journalism: the 'first responders' in the fight against COVID-19 fake news

Long live local journalism: the 'first responders' in the fight against COVID-19 fake news

Dr Paul Reilly

There has been much ‘fake news’ about COVID-19 over the past month. This has included disinformation about the virus being ‘manufactured’ in the US, as well as false claims that drinking methanol and bleach cures its victims. While there is certainly some evidence to suggest that social media are turbocharging the sharing of this false information amongst citizens across the globe, politicians have also contributed to misinformation about the pandemic through their media appearances. Most notably, President Donald Trump has repeatedly misled US citizens about the availability of vaccines and the effectiveness of new treatments in his daily televised news briefings. Closer to home, Cabinet Ministers have also made a number of false or misleading statements to the press. In the past week, Michael Gove erroneously claimed that efforts to ramp up COVID-19 testing in the UK were being hampered by a shortage of the chemical reagents needed to make the testing kits.

You can read the full article in The Sheffield Telegraph.

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