SLO County Public Health is considering loosening social-distancing restrictions and is savvy enough to include provisions to evaluate its ability to “convey physical-distancing recommendations that change behavior in most residents” in determining whether to loosen or tighten restrictions.
SLO County will find it difficult to change behavior unless it eliminates, or at least mitigates, the negative impacts of misinformation.
One misinformation source (Fox News) has consistently provided misleading and dangerous information to its followers. In the interest of public health, mitigating the negative effects of this (and other) sources of misinformation must be considered when developing a strategy to survive this pandemic.
SLO Public Health should take the following actions regarding sources of misinformation:
• Restrict access.
• Place warning labels or other notices.
• Collect data to track the correlation between misinformation consumption and unsafe behaviors.
Consider this: Is Fox News misinformation one reason why Paso Robles, with a population only three times larger than Morro Bay, has an infection rate that is 10 times higher?
Malcolm McEwen
Morro Bay
This article appears in May 7-17, 2020.
The Left’s lust for censorship is never far from the surface, and is just waiting for a convenient excuse to suppress competing opinions.
The writer might be correct about Fox misinformation, but the Internet is now full of it. Nobody ‘believes’ Fox any more than they believe MSNBC. If you are not a total information skeptic by now, you are living in a bubble.
Steve Scarich, you are making a false equivalence between Fox News and MSNBC. Fox uses “personality hosts” (Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson) to spread conspiracy theories and create doubt about scientific facts. That is their mission, not a search for the truth.
At MSNBC, Rachel Maddow has a PhD in international political affairs. Her show is followed by Laurence O’Donnell who served for years as a Senate aide. And when O’Donnell DOES go off an an axe-grinding tangent, I know to take him with a grain of salt.
Further, the guests on MSNBC are often veteran award-winning journalists. Other guests include present and former health and medical officials, university-based specialists, as well as scientists.
You are right about the internet. Unless the source is from the credible, fact-checked media, I am skeptical and will take a pass.
^
Sucker for fake news. Even from a useless piece of paper sporting, TDS riddled dude with short hair on MBSNBC or any of the other Lame Stream Media (going back 40+ years).
This is why FN has trounced ALL OF THE FAKE NEWS CHANNELS, by a large margin, for a very long time.
FN is not my only source of news. They are more opinion versus news for a couple years now but their opinions are not fake news based.
“FN is not my only source of news.”
Unless you’re referring to Breitbart, that is total and complete bull**** and you all know it.
Fox is the only national propaganda source for me-firsters, anti-science flat-earthers, white supremacists, anglophiles, nativists, xenophobes, angry Boomers, militant nationalists, and the academically disinclined.
No other national network would stoop to pandering to these groups.
^
Racist comments against Anglos is still racism.
Look in the mirror (guilt ridden) racist!
Being a left leaning, low info fool that immediately thinks everyone that doesn’t take the blue pill from the MSM is any of those alleged archetypes you so dutifully mentioned is quite telling in its own right.
Against assumptions, I am an educated American of Hispanic descent, surname and DARK SKIN to match, living here in SLO Cty.
Btw, I do not now nor have I ever purposely visited a Breibart media channel. That would be akin to landing on and intently believing a long standing (40+ years), falling over left, lying MSM channel.
My non-Lame Stream Media aka Fake News sources include but are not limited to OANN (growing exponentially, even over FN) and Newsmax. Both of which can be found on satellite & cable channels, in addition to individual websites.
-Hispanics4Trump
-Trump2020
-SuperMajority2020
-WalkAway