Seventy-four Journalism professors have accused the heads of Fox News of spreading misinformation on the coronavirus. (photo: Kevin Hagen/Getty)
03 April 20
'Viewers of Fox News, including the president of the United States, have been regularly subjected to misinformation relayed by the network' says letter
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an open letter to Fox News heads Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch, a
group of 74 professors of journalism and journalists have called the
network’s coverage of the coronavirus pandemic a “danger to public
health”.
The letter says that Fox News is endangering its own
viewers, the average age of whom is 65, making them one of the two most
at-risk groups to experience complications if they contract the virus.
“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 letter says.
It continues: “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.”
Fox News is regularly named as one of the most trusted
networks in America, and so polling cited in the letter is particularly
disturbing given the average age of the viewership. A Pew Research poll
said that 79 per cent of Fox News viewers said that they believed the
media had exaggerated the risks of the virus, while 63 per cent said
they thought the virus only posed a minor threat to the health of the
country.
While the signatories of the letter acknowledge that
Fox News reporters have done some solid reporting, and that increasingly
screen time is being given to more medical and public health
professionals. However, this is being lost by the network not
distinguishing between the authority of an expert and the authority of a
pundit or politician out of ideological loyalty.
Presenters who were called out by name include Sean
Hannity for saying that Democrats and the media were inflating the
dangers to “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax”, and Steve Hilton for
saying that accurate representations of the virus were “our ruling class
and their TV mouthpieces — whipping up fear over this virus.”
Tucker Carlson was also mentioned for his touting of a
“flimsy” French study about the effectiveness of two drugs in treating
the coronavirus. The next day the president referred to “very, very
encouraging early results” from the drugs and called a third drug a
“game changer.”
“The basic purpose of news organisations is to
discover and tell the truth. This is especially necessary, and obvious,
amid a public health crisis. Television bears a particular
responsibility because even more millions than usual look there for
reliable information,” the letter adds.
It concludes: “Inexcusably, Fox News has violated
elementary canons of journalism. In so doing, it has contributed to the
spread of a grave pandemic. Urgently, therefore, in the name of both
good journalism and public health, we call upon you to help protect the
lives of all Americans—including your elderly viewers—by ensuring that
the information you deliver is based on scientific facts.”
On Thursday there were more than 226,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the US and over 5,300 deaths.
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