“My inbox is flooded with people trying to get me to interview people who are being passed out as experts, who really are not experts,” she said.
In addition, the coverage, presented with the signature flash of cable news, has at times amplified misleading or downright false narratives about the spread of the virus.
Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, for instance, floated the possibility in a Fox News interview that the coronavirus had originated at a Chinese laboratory, a theory that scientists say lacks any evidence.
Jon Cohen, who is among the team of reporters covering the coronavirus for the magazine Science, said anyone exaggerating the likelihood that the virus had been created in a laboratory could leave viewers misinformed.
“It reinforces biases people have against China, against government, against scientific research,” Mr. Cohen said.
Mr. Limbaugh, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Mr. Trump this month, used his radio program this week to link the virus with the Democratic presidential front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
“Just keep in mind where the coronavirus came from,” Mr. Limbaugh told listeners. “It came from a country that Bernie Sanders wants to turn the United States into a mirror image of: Communist China.” (At a CNN town hall on Monday, Mr. Sanders, who identifies as a democratic socialist, described China as an “authoritarian country, becoming more and more authoritarian,” adding that it had “taken more people out of extreme poverty” than any other nation.)
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/business/media/coronavirus-right-wing-media.html
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