Right-wing Media and the COVID Hoax

Why can’t America contain the Trump Virus? Right-wing media outlets like Sinclair Broadcast Group, Fox News and Brietbart have pushed conspiracy theories to benefit Trump even claiming that Covid is a hoax. They mislead Trump and his voters. Commentators attack the scientists and dispute the death rates.

Fox News has repeatedly run segments promoting ideas that scientists consider false or that question the seriousness of the virus. Sinclair operates hundreds of television stations. They repeatedly run false segments downplaying the severity of the virus. Sinclair  recently published an online interview with a known conspiracy theorist.  The nut claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci created the coronavirus using monkey cells.

Conspiracy website Breitbart even published the video last week in which a group of “doctors” claimed that masks were unnecessary. They also promoted the drug hydroxychloroquine as the miracle cure promised by Trump. It received 18 million views in eight hours on Facebook. President Trump even tweeted a link to it.

“Trump repeatedly failed to act to tame the spread, even though that would have helped him politically,” The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent has written. The headline on Sargent’s opinion column is: “How Fox News may be destroying Trump’s re-election hopes.” Fox News has repeatedly run segments promoting ideas that scientists consider false or that question the seriousness of the virus. Fox News has repeatedly run segments promoting ideas that scientists consider false or that question the seriousness of the virus.

The result is confusion among many Americans about scientific facts that are widely accepted, across the political spectrum, in other countries.