TY - JOUR T1 - COVID-19 information in news media: room for greater transparency JF - BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine JO - BMJ EBM DO - 10.1136/bmjebm-2020-111621 SP - bmjebm-2020-111621 AU - Anisa Rowhani-Farid AU - Kyungwan Hong Y1 - 2021/02/25 UR - http://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2021/02/24/bmjebm-2020-111621.abstract N2 - Access to accurate scientific information is of paramount importance, particularly amid a global pandemic. We access scientific information through various platforms, including social media, news outlets (print and video), Twitter, magazines, peer-reviewed journal articles and more recently, through preprints. However, following some high-profile retractions of influential COVID-19 scientific articles, there is much mistrust and confusion around what news is accurate.1 In situations like this, there is an even higher premium on ensuring that the data underlying scientific findings are publicly accessible. Thus, news outlets that continuously deliver COVID-19 related scientific information to the public should be held to similar standards as scientific journal articles, that is, to share anonymised datasets they are curating and reporting in their news articles.One such place where underlying data are needed is the data on ‘excess mortality’, which has dominated the COVID-19 pandemic news cycle for months. ‘Excess mortality’ or ‘excess deaths’2 refers to the number of deaths above expected levels, regardless of the reported cause of death, and it … ER -