The magazine Science has published a study that is worth reflecting on. Its authors claim that factually accurate news, but with headlines suggesting harmful effects of covid vaccines, have nearly 50 times more impact than the blatant lies spread by anti-vaccine groups. It’s what’s called “grey content,” because the article is technically correct, but the implications of it are not. With an example it looks better. The Chicago Tribune published the headline “A healthy doctor dies two weeks after receiving the covid vaccine; Health investigates”. The coroner determined that, indeed, the vaccine caused him to have an unusual reaction that resulted in his death. But to determine whether this treatment was safe or not, the cases must be put in context with billions of doses delivered without this unfortunate consequence (and also with the percentages of covid deaths in unvaccinated individuals). In any case, the news – when it was still a speculation, without medical confirmation certifying the cause and effect relationship – was seen by 54.9 million Facebook users: one in five registered on this network in the United States . That was six times more than all content marked as fake news by platform verifiers and combined users.
A headline attracts attention, but contains the danger of leaving an idea too simple or distorted if it takes the part entirely. The authors of the study believe that this gray journalism increased doubts about vaccines by 2.3%, and that about 3 million citizens renounced the treatment due to the impact of biased journalistic material. In contrast, outright fake content only impacted 0.05% (or 65,000 people). To think about it.
