White House’s Jha: Social media platform owners should consider role in COVID misinformation
2:34 pm Tuesday, November 22nd, 2022
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Owners of social media platforms should consider their personal responsibility regarding health disinformation, and the public should choose reputable sources to trust, White House COVID-19 response coordinator Ashish Jha said on Tuesday.
“You can decide to trust America’s physicians, or you can trust some random dude on Twitter. Those are your choices,” Jha said at a White House press briefing.
“For journalists and for people who own platforms, what I would say is you should be thinking about what your personal responsibility is, and do you want to be a source of misinformation and disinformation? That’s up to up to those individuals,” he said.
Jha was answering a question on Twitter allowing politicians and others who spread COVID vaccine misinformation back onto the platform under the leadership of new owner Elon Musk.
(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
