A rejoinder to misleading articles about misleading media coverage: a case of COVID-19

摘要

Not surprisingly, with the outbreak of COVID 19 in the first half of 2020, scholars have raced toresearch or comment on how this global pandemic has impacted individuals, societies, andeconomies. Because of the global nature of the virus, international relations and politics havebecome important issues as the virus spread from country to country through international travel.Some of focus in dealing with the virus has been on the comparison of how nations deal with thevirus as well as its origin and source. Hence, the way media in different nations have reported “facts”differs. While not new, post-truth politics and fake news have become a catch-cry of those who wantto discredit those with different opinions (Gordon, 2018; Yee, 2017). This leads to the purpose of therejoinder. The rejoinder responds to not one but two papers recently published in Anatolia: AnInternational Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research. These papers are Zheng et al. (2020)and Wen et al. (2020). In response to these articles, the issues raised in the rejoinder highlights theneed to critically evaluate all points of view and censorship in the media.