The Only Thing Conspiratorial About The Covid Lab-Leak Theory Was Media’s Coordinated Dismissal Of It
This week, Democrat activists posing as journalists were forced to admit a hard truth millions of Americans have known for years: The outbreak of the Covid-19 virus most likely came as the result of a lab leak in China.
On Sunday afternoon, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Energy Department had recently provided a classified memo to the White House and several members of Congress concluding “the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak.”
“The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research,” the report reads. “The FBI previously came to the conclusion that the pandemic was likely the result of a lab leak in 2021 with ‘moderate confidence’ and still holds to this view.”
Within hours of the Journal report’s release, corporate media outlets, from CNN and NBC News to The New York Times and The Guardian, dutifully regurgitated the Biden administration’s findings. The Narrative™ is changing, so regime media are taking their cues.
Conservatives, who had considered evidence of a possible lab leak from the beginning, have seen this routine before and remember well the coordinated squelching of a dissenting origin theory. We know exactly how these same self-professed truth-seekers went out of their way to accuse anyone who considered the possibility that Covid leaked out of a Chinese lab of promoting a “debunked” “conspiracy theory.”
“This question about the Wuhan lab — we know it’s been debunked, that this virus was man-made or modified or anything like that,” then-MSNBC host Kasie Hunt previously said. “The Wuhan Lab Leak Hypothesis Is A Conspiracy Theory, Not Science,” a June 2021 headline from Forbes reads. Other outlets that attempted to dismiss the theory include NPR, Rolling Stone, Foreign Policy, CNN, NBC, and The New York Times, just to name a few.
Legacy Media Lie, Lie, and Lie Some More
It wasn’t enough that the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, or former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe released reports and statements over the past three years confirming the lab-leak theory was plausible, if not likely. But legacy media had their narrative and followed it in lockstep.
Among the most egregious tactics used to discredit the theory was the intentional conflation of the hypothesis with speculation that Covid-19 was created as a Chinese bioweapon and unleashed intentionally on the world. Case in point: Sen. Tom Cotton.
During an appearance on Fox News in February 2020, the Arkansas Republican raised the possibility that the virus could have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, saying, “We need to at least ask the question” about a potential lab leak given China’s “duplicity and dishonesty” at the beginning of the pandemic. Despite such benign remarks, The Washington Post’s Paulina Firozi attacked Cotton in an article with the headline, “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked.”
The article was so grossly dishonest in attempting to conflate Cotton’s innocent speculation about the virus’ origins with conjecture that it was a Chinese bioweapon that the Post was forced to issue a weak correction on the story. Of course, that correction didn’t come until 15 months after the article was published and Cotton’s name had been successfully dragged through the mud.
Yet even with the Post’s admission that Cotton’s remarks weren’t conspiratorial, the article still reads like it could be a press release from the Chinese Communist Party. In the updated piece, Firozi still refers to the lab-leak theory as “fringe” and cites numerous so-called “experts” who dismiss “the possibility the coronavirus may be man-made.” She even goes out of her way to regurgitate comments from China’s former ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, who called speculation about the lab-leak theory “harmful” and “dangerous” during his February 2020 appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
America’s Press Is Irreparably Broken
Despite their long-overdue “corrections” and attempts to maintain a veneer of credibility, legacy media’s evolving coverage of the Covid lab-leak theory is just another reminder that today’s “journalists” are nothing more than Democrat Party activists who specialize in gaslighting. In their coverage of the biggest stories over the past several years, none of the major outlets deemed credible by “disinformation” tracking groups have been accurate or honest in their so-called reporting.
From the Russia collusion hoax, to the Covid response, to Black Lives Matter riots, legacy media have always placed their personal, political agenda above the facts. No amount of too-little-too-late narrative-shifting can cover it up.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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