COVID-19: Fake news, bias affecting media coverage

HEALTH   VIRUS   MEDIA

Misinformation, fake news and bias are affecting media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, with significant strain on Africa-China relations, experts observe.

Yet, though the extent to which disparate narratives about the virus have shaken the relationship remains a subject of debate, scholars and observers see a challenging space for the media.

During a webinar on media coverage of the pandemic on Wednesday, journalism scholars and media practitioners highlighted emerging challenges in media reporting about the pandemic. 

Eric Olander, the host of the China Africa Project and Podcast and online partner of the Africa-China Reporting Project, noted that the pandemic was itself a complicated story for journalists.

With COVID-19 soon turning into a new front in the China and the US stand-off, toxic narratives regarding the origins of the virus presented new hurdles to the media, Olander said.

Likewise, the rumours, conspiracies and outright fake news have created a huge problem for media consumers, who are often unable to sift through the reports, the webinar host observed.

Prof Zhang Yanqiu, the Director of the Africa Communication Research Centre at the Communications University of China in Beijing, acknowledged that some challenging perspectives on media coverage of the pandemic had come to light.

She noted that the outbreak has been covered differently by Chinese, Western and African media organisations, highlighting diametrically opposed media philosophies. 

"COVID-19 has shown us the differences and similarities between Chinese, African and Western media approaches. But the primary responsibility of the media is to be balanced," she stated.

Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-chief and podcast host of SupChina (TBC), a digital media firm focusing on China, argued that the COVID-19 had not created a media divide but exacerbated and accelerated the divide and shown its extreme the realities.

At the start of the pandemic, western press treated the virus as a Chinese problem, focusing coverage on political shortcomings and issues such as shortages in health facilities, he observed.

According to Goldkorn, accurate information about the pandemic at some point was influenced by propaganda from Chinese and US officials, leaving journalists to sift seed from chaff.

The pandemic, he observed, has exposed some weaknesses in the western press, which has been adept at focusing more on disasters elsewhere, with little attention to the situation at home.

Guangzhou incident

In the context of China-Africa ties, reports of maltreatment of some Africans in Guangzhou have got experts voicing concern that COVID-19 has exposed a wedge in relations.

Asked about the incidents, Prof Zhang said the issue was widely discussed on Chinese media platforms and had presented an opportunity for the government to examine and address.

She, however, argued that race relations highlighted by the incidents were not as bad as projected by media, particularly Western press organisations.

But Goldkorn argued that the pandemic and the incidents in Guangzhou have widened the gap in the China-Africa relations. 

With western social media sites inaccessible in China, Oluwamayowa Tijani, a COVID19 fact-checker at AFPFactCheck said the incidents, which went viral on social media sites on the continent, had left a dent in the China-African relationship.

Zhang maintained that social media cannot be trusted, and said African students at her university are treated ‘as princes and princesses,' a kind of story that the media seldom chooses to pursue.

But Olander, who hosts a regular podcast on China-Africa matters, said he often finds it hard to get Chinese scholars and experts to speak, which affects the principle of balance.

This, he observed, is compounded by the fact that too few African journalists have good knowledge of China's political system, and media editors have a penchant for sensational stories. 

The quintessential Western liberal media's ‘good news is bad news' approach to media reporting has done more harm than good, by presenting alarmist, one-sided images, Goldkorn asserts.

Bridging ties

According to Goldkorn, breaking barriers and increasing citizen exchanges could be a good idea to start with, allowing stories to be told from a broader perspective of people's experiences.

One of the biggest lessons for journalism from the pandemic, he says, is that the press should pay more attention to health.

For Mayowa, more openness by authorities could help journalists create, accurate, balanced and comprehensive reports about similar pandemics while Prof Zhang believes the solution lies in constructive journalism, which is solution-based.

The webinar, organised by the Wits Journalism Department and the Africa-China Reporting Project, sought to explore the impact of different aspects in media coverage of the pandemic, Africa-China relations, and the role of journalists in providing accurate information.