Fighting misinformation during a pandemic

Fact-checking and verification were already crucial skills for journalists before the COVID-19 pandemic came along, thanks in part to the rise of Donald Trump and the alt-right’s weaponization of social media. But the coronavirus has made fact-checking and filtering skills even more important, as trolls traffic in rumors about how drinking bleach or taking megadoses of vitamin C can cure the virus, or how the rollout of 5G cell network technology caused COVID-19 (misinformation that Twitter is now removing in the UK, after a number of antennas were toppled and burned). Complicating things even further: the president of the United States is spreading misinformation about whether the virus can be treated by injecting disinfectant.