Providing accurate news coverage

may be a thing of the past. I really don't know. I acknowledge that I may be mistaken but I thought that "news" was supposed to inform people. I also thought that it was, at least in our society, supposed to do so as accurately as possible.

I know that some of the news on television is pre-recorded, that people are on stand by only if something really important comes up.  How important does it have to be?

I really would have thought that giving people accurate information about vaccination against the Covid19 virus fell into the category of "important", important enough to get your facts right and deliver them to your audience. Instead of that one of our news services provided some information that has been discredited many hours earlier. It was as good as saying to older people, "Don't bother to get vaccinated. It isn't going to help you."

And it all started out because an otherwise quite reputable German newspaper printed a piece claiming that one of the vaccines was only 8% effective in older patients. The journalist writing the piece claimed to have the information from "unnamed sources". Alarm bells were ringing so loudly in my ears I was having difficulty in thinking  how to counter what was obviously nonsense. How on earth did that story slip through the editorial net?  Have people not managed to learn anything from the harm done by Andrew Wakefield's claims about a relationship between vaccination and autism? 

That lead story last night should have been pulled. It should not have been aired. Retracting it later is too late. People tend to believe what they first hear, not what they subsequently hear. 

We are already going to have problems enough around delivering a vaccine nationwide, let alone beyond that to the people who need it most. The production and acquisition problems are just a start. There are also the logistics of administration and delivery. And of course there will be those who want to disrupt all this, those who oppose all forms of vaccination. Add to them the morally bankrupt criminals who see it as a means of control and making money.

By the time I had found the relevant contact the story had come and gone. It is unlikely they would have listened anyway. I just have to hope that the harm done will be reduced by subsequent and more responsible reporting.