by the New York Times’s Sheera Frenkel and Tiffany Hsu: “The Freedom’s Phoenix, a local news site in Phoenix, and The Atlanta Business Journal, a news site in Atlanta, both published the same article about coronavirus vaccines in March. The author was Joseph Mercola, who researchers and regulators have said is a top spreader of misleading Covid-19 information. In the article, Dr. Mercola inaccurately likened the vaccines to ‘gene therapy’ and argued against their usefulness. A month later, The Freedom’s Phoenix and The Atlanta Business Journal also published another article by Dr. Mercola. This time, he blamed the billionaire Bill Gates for the pandemic... Dr. Mercola and other superspreaders of anti-vaccine content, who have been listed by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate as the ‘Disinformation Dozen,’ have appeared in articles in local publications or as guests on local radio shows and podcasts, according to a review by The Times... As the local news industry has been hit by declining advertising revenues and cuts, some outlets have sometimes unknowingly run vaccine misinformation because they have fewer employees or less oversight than in the past, said Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst.”

Source: Washington Post August 02, 2021 15:44 UTC