From Mahnoor
Makhdoom
BEIJING: Disinformation and false reports about the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) have bombarded social media and stoked unfounded fears among netizens. Many mainstream media reported and clarified these rumors in order to present a true picture of the epidemic to the public and help them stop panicking.
A video of a Chinese influencer eating bat soup went viral online following the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China.
Some news outlets published false reports saying that the virus may be linked to contaminated bat soup.
“But the video was not shot in Wuhan, or in China for that matter,” the BBC said in a report on Jan. 30.
“Originally filmed in 2016, it shows popular blogger and travel show host Mengyun Wang during a trip to Palau, an archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean,” the BBC said.
“The new coronavirus is believed to have emerged from illegally traded wildlife at a seafood market in Wuhan. Although bats have been named in recent research from China as a possible source of the virus, bat soup is not particularly commonplace in the country and the investigations into its exact origins continue,” it added.
According to an opinion published by The Guardian on Feb. 1, “the ‘bat soup’ canard is a classic example of disinformation – and a potent one.”
“In this case, actual footage of a Chinese woman eating a bat in soup was ripped out of its actual context (a travel blogger’s video from a restaurant in Palau filmed in 2016) and spuriously linked to the fact that some coronaviruses originate from bats, in order to create a narrative that appealed to a western audience’s racist fascination with Chinese appetites,” The Guardian said.
In Australia, a fake alert, purporting to be from the Queensland government, advised the locals to stay away from areas with a high percentage of Chinese people.
Duncan Pegg, a Member of Parliament of Queensland, posted a screenshot of the alert on Twitter and said it is “100% FAKE!!! FAKE!!! FAKE!!!”
“I don’t normally like to give any credence to people who seek to malign our community but wanted to make things clear this time,” he said.
Another groundless claim that has gone viral online was made by a report by the Washington Times on Jan. 26. It suggested that the virus “may have originated in a laboratory in the city of Wuhan linked to China’s covert biological weapons program.” The “bioweapon” conspiracy story quoted former Israeli military intelligence officer Dany Shoham as its source.
