SFGATE: Opinion: Data shows Fox News duped millions about COVID
Published on June 28, 2020 at 05:35PM by Margaret Sullivan, The Washington Post
It's another one of those Trump Era realities best described as unsurprising but nevertheless shocking.
Three serious research efforts have put numerical weight - yes, data-driven evidence - behind what many suspected all along: Americans who relied on Fox News, or similar right-wing sources, were duped as the coronavirus began its deadly spread.
Dangerously duped.
The studies "paint a picture of a media ecosystem that amplifies misinformation, entertains conspiracy theories and discourages audiences from taking concrete steps to protect themselves and others," wrote my Washington Post colleague Christopher Ingraham in an analysis last week.
Here's the reality, now backed by numbers:
Those who relied on mainstream sources - the network evening newscasts or national newspapers that President Donald Trump constantly blasts as "fake news" - got an accurate assessment of the pandemic's risks. Those were the news consumers who were more likely to respond accordingly, protecting themselves and others against the disease that has now killed more than 123,000 in the United States with no end in sight.
Those who relied on Fox or, say, radio personality Rush Limbaugh, came to believe that vitamin C was a possible remedy, that the Chinese government created the virus in a lab, and that government health agencies were exaggerating the dangers in the hopes of damaging Trump politically, a survey showed.
"That's the real evil of this type of programming," Arthur West of the Washington League for Increased Transparency and Ethics, which sued Fox News in April over its coronavirus coverage, told the Times of San Diego. "We believe it delayed and interfered with a prompt and adequate response to this coronavirus pandemic." (A Fox News lawyer called the suit "wrong on the facts,...
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