How the Lab Leak Theory has Proved that Establishment Media can no longer be Trusted
For months mainstream media outlets have framed the lab leak theory as debunked and anti-science. Suddenly they have changed face and have begun to accept its possibility. Why?
As the COVID-19 pandemic begins to wane and we near 6 months into the administration of President Joe Biden, many organizations, and individuals (myself included) are beginning to take a reflective look on the past year and a half and recognize the failures and shortcomings of our institutions in responding to COVID-19. A recent breakthrough of this reflection comes courtesy of BuzzFeed news, and The Washington Post being granted their Freedom of Information Act requests for a combined over 4,000 pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails dating from January 2020 through the pandemic.
Many media organizations on the right have taken this new information as ammunition to attack Dr. Fauci over his shifting positions on masking and other decisions that have already been public and questioned for months. Meanwhile the reaction on the left could not have been more polar, praising Fauci for his hard work, and tirelessly dedication with no substantive mention of the new controversies (See CNN and NPR). However, one of the under looked aspects of these email releases showcases Fauci’s acknowledgement of possible gain of function research (where research make viruses and diseases more deadly so as to better study them) happening with funding from the NIH which Fauci heads as well as early support for a potential lab leak of the virus as early as February 2020.
While these emails are not a real “bombshell” on the lab leak hypothesis and do not truly add much more new and consequential information, they do perhaps give the best example of the gaslighting from major media networks and other elites surrounding controversial COVID-19 theories throughout the past 18 months.
An average consumer of mainstream media likely would have only heard about the lab leak hypothesis at two different moments throughout the pandemic. Firstly, when then President Donald Trump endorsed the theory throughout spring of 2020 in the first months of the pandemic’s United States outbreak, and again in the past few weeks as major news outlets such as The Atlantic and Time Magazine as well as to an extent mainstream media organizations such as CNN and the NY Times have switches their tune and suddenly endorsed the hypothesis. An average consumer of media would have seen this evolution through the “trust the science” rhetoric of left-wing media and politicians that has led the pandemic response. Donald Trump has been repeatedly framed as untrustworthy and anti-science (claims that to a large extent have been true) meanwhile, Dr. Fauci gained prominence as an almost deity like figure who could do no wrong.
Seeing how mainstream media outlets have seemingly overnight changed face on the lab leak hypothesis (as well as Dr. Fauci, the CDC, and the Biden Administration) from being a total conspiracy theory, The Washington Post called it “Already Debunked” in February 2020 a claim that was corrected just yesterday, to a scientifically accepted possibility, a normal observer might ask “what changed in the past year”? Based on the media and establishment Democrats “trust the science” rhetoric you might assume that new groundbreaking scientific evidence has emerged, but you would be wrong. Many independent and non-mainstream journalists and scientists alike have been covering the lab leak hypothesis since very early in the pandemic, including biologist Bret Weinstein who spoke of it on the Joe Rogan Experience in June 2020, as well as Saagar Enjeti on The Hill’s rising (now going fully independent) who has consistently covered the theory.
So, if the lab leak hypothesis has been relevant since early in the pandemic, what has actually changed to make mainstream media sources as well as the Biden administration acknowledge its possibility? While new information released two weeks ago showing that three Wuhan lab research fell ill with COVID-19 symptoms in November of 2019, months before the Chinese government recognized COVID-19 as a serious problem, reinvigorated support for the lab leak theory, the circumstantial evidence did not really bolster the already convincing levels of evidence in support. Rather, something else is obviously at play with mainstream media organizations, social media sites, and establishment Democrat politicians all holding the same line of gaslighting believers in the lab leak theory.
Following scrutiny over the past few weeks, different media members have had wildly different takes defending their actions surrounding the lab leak theory. One take we have seen courtesy of CNN, MSNBC, and The Washington Post among others is that their dismissal of the lab leak theory was simply a logical reaction to the fact that Trump endorsed it. In even greater extension of this claims that endorsement of the lab leak theory is an extension of Trump’s racist “Kung Flu” rhetoric that was a focus of the media (at the expense of criticizing the Chinese government). We see an extreme of this courtesy of Apoorva Mandavilli who is a NY Times COVID-19 reporter who claimed in a since deleted tweet that “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots”. While I will be the first to admit that Trump’s rhetoric surrounding COVID-19 was extremely divisive and charged potential attacks against Chinese Americans as opposed to the CCP solely, the take that the lab leak theory which blames Chinese government sponsored research for a pandemic that has killed millions is somehow racist while the countervailing theory that COVID-19 originated due to disgusting conditions in Chinese wet markets is not at all prejudicial is completely laughable.
Others in the media have decided to double down against the lab leak theory claiming that it has always been and still is a debunked conspiracy theory. A recent article from Forbes compares lab leak theorists to those who think 9/11 was an inside job and climate change deniers, all while making the case that lab leak cannot be true because in the past every virus has been natural in origin.
The combined groupthink of mainstream media organizations, social media regulators, and establishment bureaucrats and politicians in wholly rejecting the lab leak hypothesis for months but now suddenly reversing course and gaslighting that they are truth tellers is something that should be exposed. I find many things about Donald Trump’s rhetoric abhorrent and would criticize many parts of his pandemic response, however hating Donald Trump is not an excuse for shutting down the debate and spread of information (Facebook and Twitter among others branded lab leak posts as disinformation) of a legitimate scientifically backed theory with major ramifications about the origins of COVID-19 and how we prepare for the future.
In reflecting on the past 18 months and the COVID-19 pandemic it is important to recognize who holds the power in influencing the information you receive and what interests they have. While I do not believe that there is some grand conspiracy where US media is covering up for China, I have no doubts that these companies would have covered the pandemic extremely differently had a Democrat been president. Now that Trump is gone (at least for now) it will be much more necessary for mainstream media outlets to stir controversy for their success which gives more reason than ever before to invest in supporting independent journalism and commentary separate from the establishment that has proven its own groupthink and priorities is more important than delivering truth.