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Welcome to the latest edition of Investigative Roundup, highlighting some of the best investigative reporting on healthcare each week.
World Leaders Fanned Flames of COVID Misinformation
Leaders of many nations deliberately spread misinformation about the origin and spread of SARS-CoV-2, deflecting blame onto rivals in a geopolitical game of gossip-mongering, according to a joint investigation conducted by the
Associated Press and the Atlantic Council s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
Leaders from China, Iran, Russia, and the U.S. led or permitted misinformation campaigns, tacitly hinted at their veracity, and ignored misinformation when they had opportunities to stop its spread, the investigation found.
Anatomy of a conspiracy: With COVID disinformation, China took a leading role
An Associated Press investigation, conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, found that powerful political figures and allied media in China, the U.S., Russia and Iran flooded the globe with disinformation about the origins of the COVID pandemic.
By ERIKA KINETZAssociated Press
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Clockwise from left: Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; Russian President Vladimir Putin; former U.S. President Trump; and Chinese President Xi Jinping. AP Illustration/Peter Hamlin
BRUSSELS The rumors began almost as soon as the disease itself. Claims that a foreign adversary had unleashed a bioweapon emerged at the fringes of Chinese social media the same day China first reported the outbreak of a mysterious virus.
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It took just three months for the rumour that COVID-19 was engineered as a bioweapon to spread from the fringes of the Chinese internet and take root in millions of people´s minds.
By March 2020, belief that the virus had been human-made and possibly weaponised was widespread, multiple surveys indicated.
The Pew Research Center found, for example, that one in three Americans believed the new coronavirus had been created in a lab; one in four thought it had been engineered intentionally.
This chaos was, at least in part, manufactured, according to a nine-month Associated Press investigation of state-sponsored disinformation conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Council s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
Anatomy of a conspiracy: With COVID-19, China took leading role
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Last Updated: Feb 15, 2021, 11:17 AM IST
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Synopsis
A nine-month investigation of state-sponsored disinformation conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Council s Digital Forensic Research Lab, shows how a rumor that the U.S. created the virus that causes COVID-19 was weaponized by the Chinese government, spreading from the dark corners of the Internet to millions across the globe.
AP
In Pic: Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying speaks during a daily briefing at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing
BRUSSELS : The rumors began almost as soon as the disease itself. Claims that a foreign adversary had unleashed a bioweapon emerged at the fringes of Chinese social media the same day China first reported the outbreak of a mysterious virus.