Two of Austria’s
most circulated and read newspapers faced strong criticism on Friday after printing
a page full of fallacious advertisement which was eventually claimed by
opponents of the government regarding the prevention of COVID-19 reported AFP.

The advertisement of Kurier and Oesterreich newspapers claimed that wearing
masks is “damaging to health” and that the “overwhelming majority of
scientists warn of serious side effects” from vaccines based on
mRNA technology. However, both claims contradict the majority of scientific
views.

Martina Salomon, the editor-in-chief of Kurier accepted in a
column printed alongside the advertisement that the previous advertisement
holds “theories decisively rejected by the majority of the scientific
community”. However, she was also not behind in justifying her publication
on grounds of “freedom of expression”.

She also stated that if such opinion would be put down, that
would “only encourage abstruse conspiracy theories”, despite the
advertisement itself warning of the dangers of a “centralised state being
used by international actors”.

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Her justification backfired her because most of the people
did not believe her arguments and in return accused both the popular newspapers
of their careless behaviour.

Many media organisations also commented regarding
this incident including the editor-in-chief of the Heute tabloid who said it
had rejected the ad and Florian Klenk, the editor of the Falter weekly who
said on Twitter: “So you can get this fake news into Kurier as an advert.
Unprecedented.”

Innsbruck University’s professor Leonhard Dobusch, who
researched on the nature of information exchange online, tweeted “the irony is
that while Facebook and co. are making it harder to take out such ads, the
previously proud print media offer them an alternative route for their
disinformation”.

Austria is presently under its third phase of coronavirus
lockdown, which will open on January 24.