How should reporters at meetings of public agencies deal with misinformation from speakers? Here's some advice

School-board meetings have become increasingly contentious as parents bring up political wedge issues such as masking, coronavirus vaccination, critical race theory, transgender student athletes, and more. Opinions on many of these issues are predicated on misinformation and conspiracy theories. Reporters covering such meetings must figure out how to report on misinformation without spreading it themselves, Julia Métraux and Sophie Hurwitz report for Poynter.

The dangers of repeating misinformation without context are clear. For instance, last summer at least two video clips went viral that showed doctors making false claims about coronavirus vaccines at school board meetings. Thousands shared the clips on social media as proof that doctors didn't trust coronavirus vaccinations. But both clips were full of misinformation, and both doctors had iffy qualifications at best: one of the doctors appeared not to be board-certified, and the other had a PhD in education, not medicine.

"For reporters covering school board meetings, deciding how to contextualize decisions and conversations in coverage can be complex," Métraux and Hurwitz report. "Not mentioning the perpetuation of misinformation and disinformation about critical race theory, transgender students and Covid-19 at these meetings is also not a solution — this misinformation still harms people in their community."

They have some suggestions gleaned from various experts:

• Reporters could choose not to quote factually incorrect claims. To do so for shock value could do more harm than good, especially when such claims don't represent a significant portion of local sentiment.
• Different issues may require different handling. Critical race theory, for example, has become a catch-all bugaboo, so defining it as originally intended may not be context enough.
• Don't repeat racist, anti-transgender, or antisemitic language (for example), since that could help normalize such language, which can make students feel unsafe. 
• Include at least one outside perspective or fact that wasn't raised in a meeting to make articles more useful to readers. One expert said, as an example, that reporters writing about a conversation about why pandemic safety protocols matter might include a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study about how children are at a higher risk of developing diabetes after being infected with the coronavirus.