Journalism and ethics amid the infodemic

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, World Health Organisation (WHO) described what it calls the infodemic—a parallel crisis of information that clouds public debate and exacerbates the impact of the virus. The WHO blamed the way information flows through the internet for creating the infodemic. Other communications theorists have described the way in which the internet is degrading the Constitution of Knowledge—a community of scientists, academics, journalists, lawyers and government figures bound by the traditional liberal values of objectivity, factuality and rationality. Still others describe the way the media’s traditional ‘gatekeeping’ role (bound by similar norms) has been usurped by social media algorithms designed to monetise public attention. This chapter outlines those challenges, assesses what they mean for journalists, and calls for the media to abandon notions of ‘balance’ by giving equal weight to all opinions. It also calls for greater regulation of the internet for social good, and for funding models for journalism that separate it from either political or commercial pressure.