Regardless of our up-to-date news service in the area of healthcare, you will have noticed a distinct absence of articles on the subject of Covid 19. Far from being out of touch with daily affairs, this was an active decision specifically taken to ensure our commitment to editorial accuracy.
THE COVID EFFECT ON NEWS
At a rate of transmission almost faster than the virus itself, news travelled around the globe in huge volume. Each new article was referenced on those that had gone before. But there’s a problem with this, one which we wanted no part in.
The backbone of good journalism is accuracy. The backdrop to Covid-19 though was misinformation and misunderstanding. The speed of transmission meant that before an article could be verified, it was used as reference material in many more. Even if the original article was updated, the many articles that relied on it were not. The population were misled, even if not deliberately.
THE VOLUME CONUNDRUM
News was sprouting so fast, with statistics and figures and science and findings and anecdotes and more, that it proved impossible to fact check. This leads journlists to find a balance of references and ‘hope’ that they are accurate.
As a smaller provider of news and information, we want to be accurate. To us ‘hope’ isn’t quite enough. We worked out early that we would be either overwhelmed or have to rely on teh same principles that others were too. So we took a decision.
THE DECISION
At healthnews.ky, to preserve our reputation for accurate, non-sensational reporting, we took the difficult decision to be absent from the most prominent healthcare news story of all time.
We are now in a phase of deeper understanding, lower volume and a series of practical steps being taken, such as acquisition of vaccines for Covid-19. With the advent of this new phase, you may well see articles creep back in on this subject. Always fact-checked.
We thought you’d like to know.
