UN chief: World faces misinformation epidemic about virus

UNITED NATIONS -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday that the world is facing “a dangerous epidemic of misinformation” about...

UNITED NATIONS -- UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Tuesday that the world is facing “a dangerous epidemic of misinformation” about Covid-19 and announced a UN campaign to flood the internet with facts and science to counter what he called “a poison” that is putting lives at risk.

Guterres urged social media organizations to do more to counter the misinformation and to “root out hate and harmful assertions about Covid-19.” The UN chief said people around the world “are scared” and want to know what to do and where to turn for advice, and they need science.He said the United Nations “will be in touch with various social media companies,” adding that quite a few of them are actively trying to root out disinformation and suspending accounts of people pushing out information “that is plain wrong and dangerous.”

The secretary-general saluted “journalists and others fact-checking the mountain of misleading stories and social media posts.”

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