False claims that heatwave is bogus spread online
www.bbc.com
Weather forecasters wrongly accused of using misleading data to "drive fear".

False claims suggesting that the BBC has been misreporting temperatures in southern Europe have been spreading on social media.

A clip of Neil Oliver, a GB News presenter, accusing the BBC “and others” of “driving fear” by using “supposedly terrifying temperatures”, has been viewed more than two million times.

For the past few weeks, an intense heatwave has been sweeping through parts of southern Europe and north Africa, with extensive wildfires breaking out in Greece, Italy and Algeria - leading to more than 40 deaths.

Speaking about the fires on Rhodes on GB News on Monday, Mr Oliver accused the BBC, and other broadcasters, of trying to “make people terrified of the weather”.

  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Is it new? Weren’t there moon landing deniers and JFK conspiracy people and Truthers within a year, long before the modern Internet algorithm nonsense.

    • Wrench@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      What’s new is that they didn’t have a great way of banding together. The village idiots were shunned, or had small groups that wiser people just rolled their eyes at.

      Now they’re bigger and more organized, to the point that the size / availability of their crazy ideas seems to lend credibility for many.

      And that money is being poured in to weaponize their chaos and hate.