I'm Michael Loeanger and this is the On the Media Midweek Podcast.

Right now another devastating hurricane is aimed at the west coast of Florida.

But as we brace ourselves for Milton, officials and communities

throughout the southeast are still responding to Helene, a storm that took over 200

lives and caused billions of dollars of damage.

All made worse by an unprecedented onslaught of misinformation and

politically expedient lives.

I called up Will Eremis, a technology reporter for the Washington Post,

who's been documenting the spread of false information about the storm relief,

especially in North Carolina. Will, welcome back to the show.

Thanks for having me.

To start off, can you just tick through some of the misinformation

that's been put out there about FEMA and about the disaster relief across the southeast right now.

There is so much misinformation out there about what's going on with the Hurricane Helene recovery effort,

with the disasters themselves, with the preparations for Hurricane Milton, here are a few

of the greatest hits. There have been claims that FEMA is running out of money to help Helene victims and survivors because it's spent the money helping migrants earlier, including illegal immigrants in the country.

There have been claims that if you ask FEMA for assistance,

they will give you a loan,

but then if you can't pay it back,

they'll seize your property.

There have been rumors that government authorities were bulldozing the village of Chimney Rock, North Carolina,

and there's different variants of this rumor in some they were doing it to

...