Fox News Hit With Lawsuit For Fake COVID-19 Info

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Fox News has faced steep criticism for peddling potentially dangerous misinformation about the Coronavirus pandemic. Repeatedly, hosts lambasted concern over the virus as a “hoax” and a “scam,” even as American cases and deaths accumulated. They simply refused, it seems, to even see a global health emergency through any lens other than protecting the public image of President Donald Trump at all costs. Now, a Washington state group called the Washington League for Increased Transparency and Ethics, or WASHLITE, has sued the network over their misinformation.

They’re seeking relief in line with the provisions of the state’s Consumer Protection Act because of the network’s past of “falsely and deceptively disseminating ‘News’ via cable news contracts that the coronavirus was a ‘hoax,’ and that it was otherwise not a danger to public health and safety.” The group behind the new lawsuit wants an injunction to keep the network from “interfering with reasonable and necessary measures to contain the virus by publishing further false and deceptive content.” The group’s leader Arthur West has shared that members of his own organization have “run into people who still believe earlier Fox News reports that the pandemic was a hoax,” and that could obviously pose grave problems for attempts at convincing people to abide by public health guidelines meant to help stem the virus’s spread.

West commented to the Times of San Diego:

‘That’s the real evil of this type of programming. We believe it delayed and interfered with a prompt and adequate response to this coronavirus pandemic within the state of Washington… when you get to the point where you are endangering the community — that transcends the limits of the First Amendment.’

Washington was one of the first states in the country to suffer major impacts from the Coronavirus, although it’s spread well on from there. The New York City outbreak alone has reached the point that the city’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, said this week that the city’s ventilator supply may only last for a few days more.

President Trump — peddling the same kind of disinformation as Fox — has publicly questioned whether authorities like de Blasio really need the amount of support that they’ve been requesting. There’s no evidence to back up Trump’s suggestion to that effect.

Fox News has actually already acted in apparent concern about potential legal vulnerability from reckless Coronavirus-related programming. After Fox Business host Trish Regan ranted about the “Coronavirus impeachment scam” during a broadcast — basically nothing more than a hodgepodge of fearmongering words slapped together, suggesting some grand conspiracy against the president — the network said that they “parted ways” with her. In the Washington case, the plantiffs are apparently looking forward to the case’s discovery period, in which they hope to unearth when, internally, the network may have begun taking the situation seriously in conjunction with hosts remaining on the air and spouting nonsense.

It’s worth noting — much of Fox’s misinformation can be traced back to the president. At a rally in South Carolina at the end of February, he himself claimed that virus concern was a hoax, wasting valuable time that he could have used to prepare.