New York Times, MSNBC, CNN slammed for claiming COVID lab leak theory was ‘debunked’

By 

Ariel Zilber

February 28, 2023 

Mainstream news outlets like the New York Times, CNN and MSNBC were criticized for failing to seriously cover the possibility that COVID originated in a Chinese lab in Wuhan.

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New government intelligence that found that the coronavirus pandemic was most likely caused by an accidental laboratory leak ignited criticism of mainstream news outlets that insisted the theory was “debunked,” including the New York Times, CNN and MSNBC.

“How many employees of media corporations who repeatedly mocked the COVID ‘lab leak’ theory as a ‘debunked’ lie that only insane conspiracy theorists believe (because Fauci told them to say that) will apologize now that much of the USG (US government) believes this?” tweeted Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald.

Greenwald took aim at the Times’ science and global health reporter, Apoorva Mandavilli, who in May 2021 tweeted: “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.”

The New York Times’ chief science and global health reporter once deemed it “racist” to consider the lab leak theory.

Getty Images

Greenwald tweeted that it was “astonishing” that Mandavilli “said it’s racist to consider the ‘lab leak’ theory.”

“It wasn’t just the NYT’s COVID reporter who said the ‘lab leak’ theory is racist,” Greenwald tweeted

“Much of the liberal-left said it, too. All that matters is the truth, but the far more racist theory was *theirs*: that COVID occurred due to primitive, unsanitary Chinese bat-eating wet markets.”

The Post has sought comment from the Times.

Critics also homed in on left-leaning cable news outlets CNN and MSNBC.

Tom Elliott, an independent journalist, posted a lengthy thread on his Twitter feed showing clips of MSNBC and CNN personalities dismissing the possibility of the lab leak as a “conspiracy theory.”

Commentators on CNN also falsely asserted that the lab leak theory was “debunked.”

ERIK S LESSER/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Elliott directed his followers’ attention to a video showing Joy Reid saying that the lab leak theory was “debunked bunkum.” Another clip features “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough referring to the possibility of a lab leak as a “conspiracy theory.”

Two other clips show CNN’s Fareed Zakaria and Drew Griffin referring to the lab leak as either a “conspiracy theory” or “widely debunked.”

Greenwald accused Reid of “mindlessly repeat[ing] what the CIA and FBI tells us.”

“A huge number of NBC and CNN employees repeatedly said the ‘lab leak’ theory was ‘debunked,'” Greenwald tweeted.

“That was a total lie. It was never debunked.”

Greenwald continued: “That lie was concocted by [infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony] Fauci and Peter Daszak, who had major, undisclosed personal conflicts in protecting the Wuhan Lab.”

Joy Reid of MSNBC also dismissed the possibility that COVID originated in a lab.

MSNBC

Daszak is the controversial New York City-based virologist who conducted research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and whose nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, received grants from Fauci’s National Institutes of Health to conduct research into coronaviruses in bats

Chinese scientists at the Wuhan lab have been accused of carrying out “gain-of-function” research, in which such viruses are manipulated to make them more transmissible, more lethal and more dangerous.

The Post has sought comment from CNN and MSNBC.

https://nypost.com/2023/02/28/new-york-times-msnbc-cnn-slammed-over-debunked-lab-leak-theory/