From social media to now radio and television shows, The Covid Misinformation is spreading at an alarming rate. It has already affected a lot of people in unhealthy ways and stopped them from getting vaccinated. Recently a podcast by Rick Wiles was aired in which he made some false claims regarding the Covid 19 vaccination that it is made by a group of people who are evil and have evil motives that they want to carry out through vaccination. This show is hosted by a media platform that has a large number of viewers, so a lot of people will be affected by the content created.
An audio company which is located in San Antonio is where the Wiles podcast was aired. This company is called iHeart Media which has a reach to a lot of Americans throughout the country. Along with this, there have been many other well-known and reputable companies who have allowed the spread of misinformation through their audio shows, for example, Apple, Spotify, and many others.
It has been noted throughout the world that vaccination has proven to be effective throughout the COvid pandemic. The Covid infection spread has declined to a good number since the vaccination began, but now with this misinformation spread on different platforms, whether it be social media or audio platforms of Apple and Spotify, the vaccination number has again decreased. These rumors and misinformation are causing the government’s efforts to go in vain.
There is a lot of Covid Misinformation that is being spread through these highly reputable means, yet there is very little action taken against it. Wiles also made a TruNews media outlet that impeaches Donald trump by calling it a “Jew coup.” This was noticed by Youtube and got banned, but you can still find it on iHeart. The iHeart seems too careless about misinformation spread which is causing chaos and health risks for citizens.
Wiles described the pandemic as “global communism when reporters asked him about his views. He further explained that it is like Nazis, and when they achieve their goal, there will be nothing like freedom for anyone anymore. These claims by Wiles are so dangerous, especially because most of his audience is youth, as they trust audio news more than print.
Evelyn Douek stated that there is something about the podcasts that people would feel more and would respond to it better than other forms of media. Maybe it is the voice of people that activates some special parts of the brain.
Bernier mentioned on a show episode that he is one of the people who is not vaccinated, and he does not intend on getting vaccinated in the future too. He further made claims in his shows on and off, misleading people with false information. In one of his tweets on Twitter, he said forty-five thousand people died because of vaccinations which are completely assumption-based with no facts or proven authentic research.
Rohrer was invited by Deyoung in one of the episodes of the show. Rohrer mentioned that vaccination is a misleading term for this procedure the government is using. The truth is that it is a procedure that changes the God-created nature of human immunity. After a few months of this show, DeYoung passed away.
On one of the programs, Buck Sexton mentioned that the herd immunity the government wants to achieve by getting everyone vaccinated would result in an opposite effect. The more vaccination is done, the more the rate of spread of infection will increase. He made this claim on a show called “The Jesse Kelly Show.”
This theory that Sexton presented on the show was based on the paper written by Andrew Read in the year 2015 about the Marek’s disease spread. Andrew was interviewed, and he said that Sexton completely misunderstood and misinterpreted the research. In Marek’s disease, the chickens, even after vaccination, did show signs of spreading the disease but not in the case of COVID 19 vaccination. COVID 19 vaccination has nothing to do with Marek’s disease. This is one of the many examples of anti-vaccine activists making false claims based on their own mind-made assumptions without any authentic proof or certification.
Mostly the AM radios are spreading Covid Misinformation, but on the other hand, it is noticed that there are a lot of public radio stations too that support the idea of vaccination and spread the right, authentic and healthy information regarding CPVID 19 vaccination.
iHeart is a large audio-based company that has almost eight hundred and sixty radio stations in total, with six hundred podcasts published every day. This has rules and regulations that every content should be made without any hate speech, promotion of propaganda, or any sort of defaming. But in all of these, it does not have a rule against spreading misinformation regarding a going pandemic, which is concerning and requires serious action.
When Spotify was accused of not keeping a check on misinformation regarding COVID, they claimed that they have well-defined criteria, rules, and strict policies against any type of hate speech or content that misleads against COVID 19. They also mentioned that considering the requests of many, they had removed all the content that had any deceptive information regarding the COVID pandemic, but the DeYoung and Rohrer conversation is still on Spotify; it has not been removed.
Dawn Ostroff, who is the content and advertising officer of Spotify, stated that the company is making a different type of content and licenses a different content too. The policies for the type of content that is presented are strict, and there is no way that any false or inaccurate content would be allowed to be presented on this platform.
Also Read: Herd Immunity will no Longer be the Goal for Ending COVID; CDC to Shift its Targets