Just because the headline article changed? 1 hour after this is posted, the word coronavirus still appears 31 times, 8 times above the fold, and once as the hot topic "coronavirus spreads"... let's cool it.
A screenshot of their home page is hardly proof(is it buried under a different page?). This could just be editorial discretion at hand. Not much happened after the death of one american was covered on the 29th. My guess is that their viewers don't care one bit about what happens outside of the US and the topic does not engage enough viewers/visitors. If it was partisan I would expect the usual truth-twisting from them.
I think it is best to look at their coverage for a few days before coming to any conclusion.
The headline in the OP is "Fox News has stopped reporting on Coronavirus" and then goes on to extrapolate that to a far-fetched conspiracy theory.
Several people have chimed in saying that the virus is all over FN's front page, it's just no longer the very most prominent headline. So even the base fact is verifiably false. That's the definition of fake news. And this site goes beyond that and tries to incite conspiracy-thinking based on this false fact.
I actually agree. We should hold HN posts to a standard of truthfulness, and perhaps this submission's headline does not meet that standard (irrespective of the contents of the screenshots).
But in supporting this argument, my question is then: What standards apply to whom? Are all opinion and thought pieces, given that they are not verifiable, and they are inherently trying to change the opinion of the reader, therefore conspiracy thinking? If not, what is the definition?
If conspiracy-thinking is the view that organisations are not operating in the best interests of the individual, one person's conspiracy-thinking is therefore another person's whistleblowing.
I would define "conspiracy-thinking" as belief-forming that's driven by fear, even if its proposition can't be totally disproved (truthfully, nothing can). Or, if you like, belief-forming that neglects to apply Occam's Razor.
But that's an inherently subjective thing. So the only thing that's important in this case is the intentional propagation of false information.
Clickbait, misrepresenting or exaggerated headlines and weak, stretching statements anger / disappoint me because they demonstrate a lack of integrity. Also, free speech has absolutely nothing to do with what content a company chooses to display. Wouldn't a more factual headline, as mentioned on John Oliver a few hours prior to this writing, be "Fox News downplayed, misinformed viewers and trivialized COVID-19"? FN may not have yet started practicing journalistic integrity, but that's beside the point.
Makes just as much sense to me that being concerned about corona virus is something they've identified as being associated with the blue tribe, and have decided to cut it out all on their own.
