Public health misinformation has historically been associated with groups that are not linked to officially recognized or legitimate sources of public health communication, such as government agencies and public media. Recent years, however, have seen the rise of misinformation promoted by official and authoritative sources, as exemplified by US President Donald Trump’s choices of vaccine sceptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr as US health secretary and COVID-19 herd immunity proponent Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health. Such official misinformation presents a novel challenge to public health communication that has not been closely examined in scholarship. This article addresses a case of official misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, the Swedish Public Health Agency (PHA) messaged against mask-wearing, warning that it could increase risk of infection. The article presents a systematic analysis of reporting on mask use by Sveriges Television (SVT), Sweden’s flagship public broadcaster, and finds that SVT amplified mask-sceptic misinformation from the PHA and prominent scientists. The findings have broad implications for how misinformation is conceptualized and suggests that we should widen our focus to acknowledge the potential for official sources of misinformation mediated by trusted media, and identify strategies to counter it. This study also provides a broader lens for examining the serious challenges and implications of official forms of misinformation for human society going forward.
Elfström et al. (Thu,) studied this question.