How Local Media Spreads False Information From Vaccine Skeptics


One radio show that seems to be part of this influence is Coast to Coast AM, which airs on 640 local stations and reaches nearly three million listeners per week. Host George Noory, in recent years Dr. Tenpenny, a lawyer and anti-vaccine activist, Robert Kennedy Jr. and Erin Elizabeth, a vaccine skeptic and founder of the Health Nut News website.

Activists used their segments of the show to reinforce their message. For example, on Coast to Coast AM’s website, Dr. In a publicity for Tenpenny to appear in April 2020 to discuss the coronavirus, he said, “He claims there is a lot of unknown regarding testing, follow-up, symptoms and other factors. The information we are told about the disease is meaningless.”

This line by Dr. It was shared on Tenpenny’s social media accounts and tweeted by some of her followers.

“We give all the views on my program, and that includes people who are against vaccines,” Mr Noory said in a statement.

Claims to be local news, but false information about the vaccine has also been posted on these sites. paid content websites. These sites, where articles were ordered and paid for by conservative think tanks, political agents, corporate executives and public relations professionals, emerged to fill the void created by the loss of local publications.

According to a review by The Times, recent articles on some of these sites, such as Last Frontier News in Alaska and Bowling Green Today in Kentucky, highlighted people who died after receiving Covid vaccines without saying it was unclear whether the vaccines were responsible. . The stories followed a pattern established in anti-vaccine blogs to pull data from a national database of post-vaccine deaths without explaining the limitations of the data.

Last Frontier News and Bowling Green Today did not respond to requests for comment.

At least one local radio host has recently retracted his anti-vaccine stance. Valentine’s DayA conservative radio host in Tennessee, in a blog post In December, he would not receive the vaccine, as his chance of dying from the virus was “well below one percent.”



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