authorities in berlin have declared the whole of france a high risk area for coronavirus infections. all travellers from france will have to present a negative test result and quarantine upon arrival in germany. in a phone call, us presidentjoe biden and british prime minister boris johnson expressed concern over what they called china's retaliatory actions after nine uk citizens who campaigned against human rights abuses were sanctioned by beijing. at least 32 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in a train crash in southern egypt. the country has suffered frequent rail accidents, due in part to poor maintenance and a lack of investment. a new attempt to refloat the cargo ship which is blocking the suez canal has failed, according to the company brought in to help. the evergiven has now been jammed across the busy now on bbc news, its

world questions: covid—19 and information, with amol rajan. this is the bbc world service. i am amol rajan, and welcome to world questions. this is the programme which brings together questions from the public around the world and puts them to the experts. for this edition, we're looking at information and misinformation. how have the big institutions, governments, health organisations and the media informed and misinformed us about the pandemic? and has the rise of what is sometimes described as fake news, though there are reasons to be cautious about that term of course, impeded the battle against the spread of covid—19? i'm joined remotely via zoom by a panel of leading journalists, academics, health experts and a representative from one of the big social media companies who will take questions from members of the public from all corners of the globe.

let me introduce you to our panel. from new york, zeynep, a technosociologist who has written extensively about covid—19. and won plaudits for her analysis of the pandemic and for her work covering the technology giants. good to see you. also with us is nick pickles, a senior director of public policy strategy and development at twitter. he is in colorado, usa. nick, good to see you. from geneva, we have margaret harris. she is a spokesman for the world health organization and has worked all over the world fighting pandemics, including ebola. margaret, good to see you. and from here in the uk, elliot higgins, founder of bellingcat, of bellingcat, an independent

international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists. elliot, it's good to see you as well. welcome to you all. now let's go to our first question. and this is from annetta in macedonia. she works in the air freight business. over to you. thank you for having me on this bbc panel. very nice to meet all of you. my question was how can government, and this means also including medical experts, can offer simpler explanations about the pandemic and about covid—19? because here in my country, we don't have so much official explanation from the government and from the medical experts and from the world health organization, we don't have almost nothing. so, how can governments best offer simple explanations about what's a complex subject to the public? given you addressed the world health organization directly, i think we should go

to margaret harris, who was smiling at your question, hopefully a positive smile. margaret, over to you. nice to meet you. i'm sorry you have not heard anything from us because at the beginning we had daily press conferences and we still have twice—weekly press conferences on this very subject, and also our regional director gives weekly press conferences. but perhaps you are saying you wanted to hear the more simple information about what the public can do and what they need to know. and sometimes it is difficult to get that. but i promise you we've got it, but from what you are saying, we need to do better. so, it's important to hear. thank you, margaret. how can government best offer simple explanations about the virus from official medical experts? i think the best way would be l to provide accurate information about the transmission mechanisms and empower people _ to use their judgment. you cannot really have

exact instructions for. setting somebody will encounter. so what i think the health - organisations like the who or international public health i authorities should do is to go i in front of people and explain, i "look, this pathogen is airborne i in this particular way and this i is what it means," so that a person i like sees somebodyjust passingl by them without a mask outdoors, they don't need to panic. that is a fleeting encounter. that'sjust not a big deal. whereas if you're going into a grocery store - and even if everybody is wearing ia mask, if it's really crowded, i that's not the safest environment even if everybody is _ that's not the safest environment. even if everybody is a few feet away because it accumulates. given the sort of vast variety- of experiences in which we all live, the best way to explain mechanisms which empower people rather - than rules which i think can fail- because how can you predict exactly what we are going to encounter? elliot, the question is how can governments best offer explanations about the virus including from the official medical experts?

in my experience, using online platforms to see how these things are discussed, it is often these discussions over the language which allow conspiracy theories and alternatives facts to appear about what is happening. that's very difficult to counter because there are communities that want to find a reason to be angry at the world health organization, don't want to trust doctors, so it's a real challenge. the world health organization has found itself at the front of communications issue in a world that has changed rapidly over ten years thanks to the internet in how we communicate with each other. and it's difficult for many organisations to deal with that in normal circumstances, but when you were the middle of a global pandemic, which is one of the biggest problems of the modern era, you then have this kind of internet community that is looking for conspiracy theories and it's very hard to predict how they're going to use these debates

that you're having as legitimate debates and discussions to push their own agendas. thank you. nick. i think as elliot said, it's difficult as we have seen here is public health agencies communicating through press conferences with journalists is one way, which is primarily intended to inform the media. and those same communications devices are also being used for the public. and i think one of the big challenges we have seen during covid—19 is really the 20th century communications methods in the information century proven by the internet and so making that transition has been challenging for some organisations and the big question i think for companies are often trying to referee some of the debate we have just heard. we want to people to have a debate, to engage on the issues but at the same time we are under huge pressure to remove content that may be harmful and so we are trying to strike that balance

between elevating credible content but also remove content that could be harmful. and often during covid—19, one of the hardest things for us has been to make a decision about what to remove when the health advice and the scientific community themselves have not aligned on a clear outcome. that makes us the arbiter of a scientific event which is not the role we should be playing. we should help people find credible information in this internet community and they should be coming to their own conclusions. indeed, as you said, these are incredibly complex calculations involving trade—offs. annetta, what has it been like where you are? can you trust the main broadcast media forms of communication? can you get information from them? yes, you can. you can get them.

but they are not so much explicit about the situation, _ about how it is transmitted. nobody is still sure for example that in indoor places if they- wear masks but they don't know exactly how to act. i there are many indoor places here like restaurants - where they are allowed to work and i visited one to be honest. a week ago and i have not been . and a whole year and i'm entering with a mask and there i see people who do not wear masks. _ so who are we kidding? i'm kidding myself outside to wear a mask where the possibility - is to catch the virus _ unless because i'm outside and then when i enter the restaurant, and you know i did not know what to do. do you wear the mask and not with the mask was met using his own to the question basically who you can trust and perhaps a question of whether or not you can trust immediate which brings us nicely to our second question.

in the north of the uk. hello from beautiful literature. hello from beautiful lancashire. my question to the panel is how much responsibility must media outlets accept for initially saying that this was an old people's disease. thus young people never protected themselves thinking that they are safe, so did the media because ageism and did it make the pandemic worse? do you mind me asking you who you're talking about physically when you say the media said initially this was an old people disease? well, initially all media reported it. it was many, many months before media particularly in the west started to talk about young people being affected by covid—i9. thank you. elliot. what do you think about what he calls the mainstream media and its performance? i think not met yet over the official weeks and months of the crisis, it felt like a messaging coming

from the media was changing every single day and i think part of that may have been informed by a sense of consciousness about not wanting to feel like they're the ones exaggerating the danger of what is happening. but then again, this comes down to an issue of trust and the trust in the information that you were getting in and it's changing on a regular basis and it seems _ to contradict what you've heard before, you're going to lose trust in those sources and i think that becomes very dangerous especially again when you have so many people who are looking for the conspiracy behind these kind of things. and it's very damaging. now is that a... i would have really approache is a question of is the entire media guilty of doing this? maybe you could do a study to see who was saying what and when but i think it was certainly a pattern i was observing in those early weeks of the crisis. margaret harris, his question is how much of responsibility must media outlets aacept for initially saying this was an old people disease? certainly right from the start - we were saying and indicating people that anyone could get it.

but the epidemiology did indicatej that the people most likely to get the severe form were older. this was one of the tricky things about the virus was everybody. could get it but the people most likely to get severe forms - and were older or had| underlying conditions. but i do remember continually trying to emphasise that a young _ person could get it, - could get very severely ill because the debate very early on i will only affects _ old people sort of attitude. and i do remember even saying do not think like this, _ this is where we are all in this and we all have to take - it very seriously. i did see lot of things in a way that did not serve the public as well because it was only older for them as well.

like myself on a more traditional media site i have see some of this. but we learn from don't worry about it, at least in the us, the effects of older people may be and don't worry about it, think i think in early on which was almost underplaying it. and then it almost went the other way at times and like it became a young person's shaming. there is the other kind of swing where people are constantly to this day sharing pictures of beaches and parks and young people just hanging out outside as if that's a major crisis which is not correct either. either end of the spectrum is not correct. but i think we need going forward is to try to find these public health agencies and agencies and the organisations so they had resources to be really quick and out there. what do you make of what she has just said? do you feel regarding what she said that you were let down by the mainstream media? yeah, i do agree that there were conflicting information the people were given

was very confusing. although i do think that this had a wider impact in society. because i think the media arguably were too quick in picking young people against old people. so i think outside the arena of covid, this brought a wider impact on society rather than bringing people together, it drover people apart. so i think it impacted the wider society. thank you. let's go to our next question. this is from david who works in tourism and he is in madrid in spain, good to see you. hi. thank you for having me. so my question is morel about on a specific thing that happened in spain. the spanish government stopped taking pictures of an ice i rink that was turned into a morgue. actually we have very i rarely seen real pictures from inside a hospital. so my question is in this case, - do we think censorship is practical or it just feeds the monster i of conspiracy and fake news?

so, your question is about censorship, whether or not censorship is justified, whether or not its practical or as you say if itjust feeds the monster of conspiracies and fake news? should i guess i say in defence of many governments, it is notjust the spanish government who would be against these sorts of pictures of what's going on inside morgues being shown, lots of people and governments around the world would not want that shown, and lots of media organisations would not allow it to be shown on the grounds of decency basically. but elliot higgins, what do you, is censorship maybe justified or it may end up feeding the monster of conspiracies? i think most of them, if you have an image that is then removed from social media platforms or banned from new sites, that will actually feel conspiracy theorists.

that is absolutely the bread—and—butter stuff, they love that kind of stuff. they want to talk about that for years. if one single image because it happened on a whole range of different topics where stuff is kind of taken off—line or something is deleted and even if it's not an act of censorship, the perception that something has been removed will be enough to feel conspiracy theories and the people get into it. then itjust like there is a cover—up. margaret. there are times when you would not use photographs but we have strict rules for instance about not identifying children and about how you would show certain procedures or even the wearing of personal protective equipment, if we have a picture does not correct we will not use it. so there are reasons for not using particular photographic items. but also i agree with what has been said before about when you remove

the thinking that we don't even, we would only remove it because of an error or in language, as our technical language is difficult and we make it simpler, we actually archive the older stuff because you're quite right, the conspiracy theorists then see the update as meaning that you are doing something very suspicious when all you're doing is acting trying to improve your work. nick, you must have in your calculations as whether or not to take down certain content or stop certain content or even have it uploaded the first place and we must reckon with the fact that you would be accused of censorship. is that a trade—off in your mind, whether or not it was worth going through the accusation? well, we have certainly been accused of censorship in the past _ and i myself have sat in congress and been accused of censorship l baselessly by people saying that we make decisions - for political reasons. the reason we introduced labels i was exactly to give the ability. to add more context to a piece| of content without removing it. and that intervention allows usl to give people a signal that says this image is not what you think it is, it is perhaps older-

without removing it and fuelling the exact cycle that elliot - and others said that the big challenge is that often - and certainly over— covid i've seen the response from any public health agencies and from governments - in the circumstances is to ask - the companies to remove the content. rather than being proactive and debunking it and - explaining to people . why it's not happening l and that is a big change that still. has not happened in communications. look at something, the endless list | of things that 56 has been blamed | for at this point is in itself- a very powerful way of explaining that 56 might not be responsible and actually unfortunately - when covid happened, _ we wanted to signpost new credible information why 56 was safe, but there was basically- information why 56 was safe, but there was basically nonel to point to because governments themselves had never— produced that information. so we need more persuasion and more education much faster and content - moderation is not going to solve this problem alone. _ that is fascinating. let's go to our final question and this is from priyanka,

an accountant in new delhi and shejoins us now. very good to see you. hi, everyone. my question is about the blurred line that has been created between the opinionated reporting and factual reporting. how do we make it more obvious so that we are able to eliminate the bias in the facts and the big question is how do we do that? how do we go about it? great question. elliot. you're group is all about getting to the truth and getting to the facts. the question is how can we limit the bias from facts? if i may paraphrase is how can we make facts fashionable again? i think partly really comes down time and time again for me of having a kind of educated populace who understand how the media works nowadays and it's critically important and i don't want to train

everyone to be media studies student, that's not what i'm saying. i'm saying we need to have looking at a new way of teaching civics because we are engulfed in media nowadays, it's coming to us from every angle and being carried on ourselves we can be engage with the media. yet we cannot have a reallyjust have society think about that and from a very early age we are not really addressing the issues that is raising and i think often were saying — the 50% of ten—year—olds in the uk have smartphones. so why don't we actually get a way of having a class and maybe not at ten years old it may be 16 or 18—year—olds but the student view for example is an organisation setting up pop—up newsrooms in the uk where students are taught how to do investigations

but it is not about turning to us to get a journalist but about engaging them with a local community. and making them learn that they can actually have an impact in their local community but that also gives him the protection the protection and understanding against misinformation and also against the way of confusing opinion for fact. and i think if we don't do that, especially this kind of knew on the communities and it will in societies, then the situation we are in there was just going to get worse and worse and worse because we are not addressing the underlying issues. a fairly pessimistic outlook, but one obviously rooted in your efforts. thank you for that. much of it ofcom is of course the uk broadcast regulator. margaret, the question from priyanka is how if it all we can eliminate the bias from factual reporting? i think again being able - to understand the difference between opinion and fact is critical but also being learning how- to search for some support. for what somebody is saying or saying is fact? learning to always check your facts. one of the glorious things and ijust love is the fact. that we can search now so easily - and there are so many things we have

taken as truism that - i'm hearing an academic the surgeon general said in 1968 we can close the book on - infectious diseases. he never said it. if you search, you asked can that is fascinating i to if he will have repeated that line and made this a truth - that is not a truth. so we are in a nature we've got ithe ability to check our facts, i i would also look at sources that give you the particularly- and the media several- opinions so you were hearing from people who don't agree with and have a better- chance of facts _ coming when you were given the opportunity to i hear from all sides. and nick pickles. i think this is a good example about what the people clear—cut that's what they're saying will help build trust and one of biggest challenges is newspapers have gone online, the structure of how you were reading a newspaper and the opinion pieces being in a physically different section to news pieces

and that we have lost that. so i think transparency of the content will build trust and i think that also applies to transparency around the contributors themselves. i think there is alarming to buy a people not appreciating that someone giving a comment might have been a political candidate or maybe has received funding from the organisation. so that transparency will build trust and at twitter for example, we've introduced these labels that we apply on state—run media. people can see if they're engaging with media is editorially controlled by government, and that kind of extra context means the people can still access information but they also have a little bit more context. but a big part of this still goes back to me the responsibility for securing the us election, we had a pretty strange case where the opinion page of a paper was being debunked by its own news pages because an opinion piece was so out there on questions of voter fraud. so a big part of this as well is making sure the people who are given immunity to share their opinions to opinion pages are also subject to a high standard and high scrutiny

by the media organisations themselves. thank you. your fellow columnists in america fear that the american attachment to the idea of news is disintegrating and what we have now is that his obsession with narrative. do you think that priyanka is right to hope that we can eliminate the bias from facts? the reality is i think there is an enormous amount of demand for intelligent complicated explanations that are not being filled. i don't mean to say that i'm the only one doing it. there's a lot of great stuff. but two of my most popular articles last year, one was about ventilation, aerosol transmission and what it means that i published in july of 2020, and the other was about over dispersion, which is how the transmission is concentrated in a few superspreading events and most people don't transmit, these are very basic important facts about this particular pathogen. and they are both 5000—6000 words, they dive into the science, they go against the grain of what everybody will tell you is popular. so i feel like what we need to do is get beyond the simplistic, is this opinion or fact and say we're going to make a case

you to give as much and we are just to justify and do the work and i trust you to give as much information as you want and we are going to link to everything else. so this is, what with conspiracy theories do but either bad faith or a wrong way and like what elliot was talking about with we are going win that argument with someone saying we are saying what we are saying rather than... i can see on the side of facts with somebody else will get up and say i'm a scientist and that does not get us out of the problem for any position you want, i will find you an expert with excellent credentials who will make that point. suggest listening to the scientists does not solve the problem because they also don't speak a single word. we need to sort of get beyond who has got facts and say justify what your position is. thank you. priyanka, what are your thoughts on your own question? do you have any hope we can eliminate bias from reporting? i think from where i come from,

what i feel is that there is lack. of sensitivity where people don't even realise that all— the information that i they are getting is... we need to make people apart - for media houses and the government also need to hold individuals- accountable to validate something before they go on and share it - for the masses, which is what i've seen a lot happeningl during this pandemic. i think that's a wonderful and cheery not on which to end. thank you so much of the esteemed panel. the questioners who have discovered so many important issues and of course to you for watching wherever you are around the world. goodbye. good evening. today brought some impressive

skyscapes, and big clouds like this tend to bring heavy showers. and the showers today haven't only been heavy, they've been wintry in places because we've had a change to some rather cold conditions. this frontal system swept eastwards with outbreaks of rain behind it. you can see the cold air flowing down from the north—west. so, where we have further showers through the night, they will continue to be wintry. we could see up to five centimetres of snow over high ground in highland scotland, but for southern scotland, northern ireland, north west england, wales, the midlands, even the moors of the west country, we could see a centimetre or two of lying snow by the end of the night. temperatures in towns and cities close to freezing. out in the countryside, some spots will getjust below. so there could well be some icy stretches to start tomorrow morning. but tomorrow should get off to quite a bright start with some spells of sunshine. however, it won't last. it'll cloud over from the west through the day. outbreaks of rain into northern ireland and western scotland. the odd spot into wales and the south west as well. but temperatures already showing signs of creeping upwards, so it is quite a short—lived cold spell. now, a windy spell awaits

during saturday night, particularly across north—western areas. notice all white lines on the chart squeezing together, all the isobars. that shows that we'll have strong winds, gales in fact for parts of northern ireland and scotland for a time. some very heavy bursts of rain working through, and that rain is likely to get stuck across central parts of the uk during sunday. to the north, a mixture of sunny spells and showers. some of those will be wintry. to the south, the cloud should tend to break to give some spells of sunshine, and that will bring some warmth, with highs of 15—16 degrees. but the temperatures have further to rise. as we move out of sunday and into monday, this frontal system will wriggle around across the north of the uk. that'll feed quite a lot of rain into parts of north west scotland. there could even be enough rain to give flooding here over the next couple of days. but to the south of our waving weatherfront, well, the air willjust turn warmer and warmer. so, have a look at some of the temperatures. across the northern half of the uk, you could see highs of 18—19 degrees, in leeds for example. we will have that rain

further north and west, particularly for western scotland. but further south could see temperatures up to 22—23 degrees, unseasonably warm for the end of march.

this is bbc news, i'm lukwesa burak. our top stories... authorities in berlin declare france a high risk area for coronavirus, requiring all travellers to be tested and quarantined upon arrival in germany. scotland's former first minister alex salmond launches a new pro—independence party to contest the holyrood elections in may. we attempt to contribute policy idea to assist scotland's economic recovery and help build an independence platform to face new political realities. borisjohnson says he'll stand firmly by british citizens, who've had sanctions imposed on them by china, which accuses them of spreading lies about abuses of uighur muslims.

and, ballet in the park —