Editorials

The Irish Times view on fake news and coronavirus: careless talk can cost lives

Social media is a perfect transmission vehicle for myths about the virus

Medical specialists attend to patients with respiratory diseases at the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases located in Mexico City. Photograph: Jose Mendez/EPA

Wed Mar 18 2020 - 00:15

Rumour, like fake news, is contagious. And the bigger the lie, the faster and the further it spreads. Not least on the social media platforms whose role as the most efficient mediums of transmission make them perfect, global coronavirus myth-machines.

Public faith in the pronouncements of the political class has waned in recent years to the point that governments all over the world – perhaps the US excepted – have tried hard to couch their advice on dealing with coronavirus as emanating exclusively from doctors and scientists. You don’t have to believe politicians, they are saying, listen to the scientists. And, by and large, the advice of experts is being accepted.

But in the social media whorl, amidst all the insight and expertise, we are also living in a Govian world where "we have had enough of experts", and anything goes. No matter how far-fetched. Conspiracy thrives – the virus was manufactured in a US lab, by Bill Gates, or China, as a weapon of war. And "cures" abound – a Nigerian pepper soup, cow urine, cloves "energised by mantras", oregano oil, vitamin C, and even drinking bleach and snorting cocaine. Don't drink milk, avoid foods such as ice cream and chicken, and try physiotherapy instead.

Caveat emptor, buyer beware. Yet millions have reposted such hokum, and it would be funny if it were not so serious. Despite emphatic denials, for example, by hospitals and medical experts across Europe, one particularly virulent strain of false rumour has taken hold, been suppressed, and reignited – that research shows ibuprofen and Difene accelerate the pace of coronavirus infection. Not so, according to the HSE, but it appears that rumour can reinfect more than once.

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It is important and welcome that Facebook has said it is trying to fact-check postings, label those that are clearly false, and reduce their ranking so they are less prominently displayed. Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok have also taken steps to limit or label misinformation. Not, please note, take down. But personal messaging platform WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, is uncontrolled, some say uncontrollable.

Many have turned to it to disseminate scare stories. India is the biggest market for the app, with more than 400 million users, and an influence that is terrifying. Dozens of people are reported to have been killed in public lynchings by angry crowds over the past four years over WhatsApp rumours they were child kidnappers.

Both the Taoiseach and the Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces, Vice Admiral Mike Mellet, have been concerned enough about the information anarchy online to issue strong warnings. "Get your facts from credible sources. Do not amplify fake news", Mellet tweeted. Careless talk costs lives.

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