By The mainstream media’s obsession with opposing everything related to Donald Trump in order to make him look bad Fox News writes, “CNN has long referred to itself as ‘the most trusted name in news’ and famously launched its ‘Facts First’ campaign during the Trump era, but like many other outlets, that sentiment fell by the wayside when it came to the COVID lab-leak theory.
In recent days, the theory that COVID originated from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology has been embraced by FBI Director Christopher Wray and a bombshell report indicated that the U.S. Energy Department believes the virus likely started in the lab, a sentiment expressed by top Trump administration officials nearly from the outset.
But in the early months of the pandemic, then-CNN president Jeff Zucker would not allow his network to chase down the lab-leak story because he believed it was a ‘Trump talking point,’ according to a well-placed CNN insider.”
The New York Post noted that “mainstream news organizations including CNN, the New York Times, MSNBC and others have been pilloried in recent days following a recent government report that concluded that an accidental leak from a Chinese laboratory is the most likely explanation for the COVID outbreak.
In the initial weeks and months of the pandemic, prominent media personalities, public health officials, and elected officials from the Democratic Party dismissed the ‘lab leak’ theory as ‘debunked’ — with some suggesting it was racist to even discuss the topic.
One of Zucker’s charges who followed through on his boss’s reported edict was Oliver Darcy, the network’s media reporter, who wrote an item in the initial days of the pandemic titled: ‘Here’s how to debunk coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy theories from friends and family.’
“While the coronavirus pandemic has isolated family and friends inside their homes, it has in many cases increased online or over-the-phone communication with loved ones,” Darcy wrote on March 28, 2020.
“But, in some cases, relatives and friends share poor information — whether it is bad science related to how to prevent the virus, debunked rumors about cities being put on lockdown, or conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid-19,” he wrote.
The Post also pointed to Fareed Zakaria, the host of CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” as Zucker follower who labeled the notion that COVID-19 spread from a lab as a “far right…virus conspiracy theory.”
In February 2022, Zucker resigned after admitting to a sexual relationship with one of his key lieutenants at the network. In a memo, he stated, “As part of the investigation into Chris Cuomo’s tenure at CNN, I was asked about a consensual relationship with my closest colleague, someone I have worked with for more than 20 years. I acknowledged the relationship evolved in recent years. I was required to disclose it when it began but I didn’t. I was wrong. As a result, I am resigning today.”
Zucker’s replacement, Chris Licht, has had his hands full trying to revive the channel’s sinking ratings. He most recently had to deal with one of CNN’s stars, Don Lemon, screaming at his cohost Kaitlan Collins and making sexist comments about women “being in their prime” when discussing Nikki Haley’s potential campaign for the White House.
Republicans have been calling for accountability following the recent revelations from the Department of Energy that it believes COVID-19 started in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
‘The elites and academics owe everyone who had legitimate questions and concerns about the origins of COVID an apology,” Rep Ken Buck, R-Colo., tweeted. “The American people deserve to see all the information concerning the Chinese lab leak and the origins of COVID. This won’t be forgotten.’”
One person who has not apologized is Anthony Fauci, the former leader of the NIH. The Washington Examiner reported, “Dr. Anthony Fauci and others ‘prompted’ a scientific paper pushing back on the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, emails show.
Scripps Research professor Kristian Andersen wrote to Nature magazine in February 2020 that he and other scientists were “prompted” by Fauci, then-director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust and now a chief scientist at the World Health Organization, to cast doubt on the theory.
The new email was made public by the Republican-led Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on Sunday evening.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released an assessment in 2021 stating that one U.S. intelligence agency, the FBI, assessed with “moderate confidence” that COVID-19 most likely emerged from a lab in Wuhan, while four U.S. spy agencies and the National Intelligence Council believed with just “low confidence” that COVID-19 most likely had a natural origin.
Scientists consulting with the U.S. government early in the pandemic in 2020 believed COVID-19 originating from a lab in Wuhan was possible or even likely, but emails indicate Fauci and Collins worked to shut the hypothesis down.”
At a committee hearing in Congress, Marty Makary, MD, MPH, the chief of islet transplant surgery and professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore supported the idea that a lab leak was the most plausible. He believes that the only reason there is a debate at all over the origins of COVID-19 come from the the United States funding the lab, which created an “embarrassing” connection to the outbreak.
He said, “The epicenter of the world [outbreak] is 5 miles from one of the only high-level virology labs in China … It’s a no-brainer that it came from the lab. I mean, at this point, it’s impossible to acquire any more information, and if you did, it would only be affirmative.”
Makarty also laid into top virologists and implied that Fauci used grant money to hush up experts who believed the lab leak made the most sense.
Dr. @MartyMakary: Two top virologists warned Fauci about the lab leak in 2020, but “changed their tunes days later in the media, and then both scientists received $9 million subsequent in funding from the @NIH” pic.twitter.com/k3Va3cIjwk
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 1, 2023
One insightful commentator has summed up what happened this way: Not only did Fauci “prompt” — commission — an article clearing the lab he funded from complicity in creating the plague that killed the world, and not only did he then pay off the scientists who he commissioned to write it with $9 million of taxpayer grants from his Science Slush Fund, but he also showed off the letter to the media as independent proof that covid evolved naturally — and pretended that he had just stumbled across it, and had nothing to do with it.
When in fact he commissioned the article, and in fact had final editorial say over its final form.”
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