Protecting TV and radio audiences from fake news requires a delicate balance of accuracy, impartiality, and freedom of speech, finds Meg Carter , after a series of high profile cases of misleading claims about covid-19
Covid-19 may no longer lead the UK media’s news agenda, but concern about covid misinformation remains. This is perhaps especially pertinent in the broadcast media, after several recent investigations and high profile rulings by Ofcom, the regulator responsible for ensuring standards in TV and radio programmes.
“Covid misinformation has not gone away, particularly around the vaccines and how they work,” says Claire Milne, health editor at Full Fact, a charity that checks and corrects facts reported in the news and claims that circulate on social media. “And with so much data and new datasets created there is lots of room for misinterpretation and misinformation.” In its 2023 annual report Full Fact called for broadcasters to do more to counter false and misleading claims by politicians.1
Retired consultant paediatrician Tony O’Sullivan, co-chair of the campaigning group Keep Our NHS Public, which includes countering covid misinformation as one of its campaigns, says that such misleading material “is also having a rebirth, as government witnesses and key people who were involved at the height of the covid pandemic give evidence to the UK Covid-19 Inquiry.”
“So, it’s incumbent on broadcasters and other media not to lazily report one person’s witness testimony as having equal weight to the established body of evidence that’s gone before.”
Covid misinformation comes in various guises, resulting from a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of covid statistics, medical information (especially relating to vaccines), and public health advice. For all media organisations tackling it can be both complex and nuanced.
For broadcasters, safeguarding audiences means vigilance across a range of programme types and formats: from news …