Because Sen. Tom Cotton is a Republican and therefore must be discredited and hopefully destroyed by the media, his comments on the origin of the coronavirus were misrepresented and misconstrued and filed as a conspiracy theory. Cotton never claimed the coronavirus was a bio-weapon, but he did point out that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was near the outbreak of the pandemic. Eventually, the World Health Organization sent some people to the lab and saw what the Chinese government allowed them to see.
Drew Holden has put together another comprehensive thread, this one tracking the media’s coverage of the Wuhan lab conspiracy theory, which was put to rest by fact-checkers who couldn’t have had any way of knowing if the virus leaked from the lab.
🧵THREAD🧵
The idea that Covid-19 may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China has gained mainstream traction of late.
It can be easy to forget that, a little over a year ago, the idea was derided as a vile, senseless conspiracy theory.
Let’s revisit. ⤵️
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
@SenTomCotton took much of the initial heat for suggesting this as a possibility back in January.
Here’s what the @nytimes had to say about his “fringe theory” that “lacks evidence” and which “scientists have dismissed.”
Apparently those concerns have been un-dismissed since. pic.twitter.com/u61hJGI7Mj
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
In another piece in 2020, @nytimes concluded that “most agencies remain skeptical” and “scientists are dismissive” of the lab leak theory. Unfortunately, appears that was certainly true, but not to their credit.
Yet another story continues to describe the idea as a conspiracy. pic.twitter.com/XbSi4pmXzQ
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
But it wasn’t just NYT. @CNN was at the forefront, writing up a poll dismissively suggesting that an accidental release was “almost certainly not true,” called the lab in question “the focus of conspiracies” and, of course, used it to take shots at President Trump. pic.twitter.com/grBgezu9vk
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
And @CNN was content to be used as a conduit for Chinese propaganda on the subject, too, seemingly trusting a dishonest autocratic regime at their word.
Giving free airtime to a hostile power’s propaganda should be indefensible. pic.twitter.com/T9foHJ4mdD
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
“We urge the US to stop spreading information,” said the country that claimed that the U.S. Army brought the coronavirus to Wuhan.
Here’s a piece from @ChrisCillizza from February 2020 that points back to a CNN fact check suggesting that you can “draw a line through it and say that didn’t happen” about the lab release theory.
Care to revisit this one, Mr. Cillizza? pic.twitter.com/nUYciGZzkk
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
@jaketapper also took a shot at @SenTomCotton, sharing an interview with an expert that Cotton’s views were something that he “put in the conspiracy theory bucket.”
When do we get to revisit this? pic.twitter.com/hRtG7XnyU8
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
Luckily, in case your relatives were suggesting that this “conspiracy theory” about a lab release were true, @oliverdarcy has you covered with this “how to debunk coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy theories” piece that references the origin of the virus. pic.twitter.com/5rT4r4wq4v
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
@NPR might’ve been the most dismissive, running stories on back to back days suggesting there was nothing to the allegations & that scientists “debunk[ed]” & “dismiss[ed]” the idea of an accidental release.
They were, in retrospect, entirely wrong, but memoryholed these pieces. pic.twitter.com/JGYatFMSts
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
The way that @MSNBC and @chrislhayes frame these two separate issues seems instructive.
When a theory without enough evidence doesn’t help the narrative, it’s a conspiracy theory.
When it does help the narrative, it’s just an open question – even if it’s a lot less plausible. pic.twitter.com/PqMDKvWV18
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
Perhaps the worst offender, though, was @washingtonpost who, in January of 2020, said that @SenTomCotton’s concerns about a potential lab leak in Wuhan were “fanning the embers of a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked by experts” (!!!) pic.twitter.com/eIj03VpQ3K
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
But that wasn’t all from @washingtonpost.
I don’t get how you can factcheck something that we don’t know the facts on – nonetheless conclude that one potentiality is “doubtful.”
And notice the defensive crouch – here & everywhere else – around the “unsubstantiated” lab theory. pic.twitter.com/wBVhDJEOIH
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
This from @politico is precisely the type of amnesia that infects reporting like this.
Two months ago, they were lamenting how warnings and concerns about bat research had been ignored.
A year before that, they chalked concerns about the Wuhan lab up to “conspiracy theories.” pic.twitter.com/J1PkKnI6Db
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
There was a rush across the board to tell the story as a battle between Trump and a lab in China. As you can imagine, Trump played the role of the villain, at least for places like @ABC back in May of 2020.
In retrospect, it appears obvious that framing wasn’t helpful. pic.twitter.com/9rBu8BUAGs
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
@NBCNews leaned into this same framing, referring to the idea that the virus could’ve originally come from the Wuhan lab as a conspiracy theory/misinformation.
The other article, well, hasn’t exactly aged perfectly. pic.twitter.com/pvKYvfptGE
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
It’s hard to fault @CBSNews when the sources weren’t exactly bulletproof, in retrospect.
But that makes a broader point: journalists should be distrustful of official sources of info. That’s historically been true. Lately, it’s been anything but – leading to errors like this. pic.twitter.com/BM3t9TSXOd
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
Well, if Anthony Fauci dismissed it …
@business apparently heard about the concerns tied to the lab, asked the lab run by communist autocrats if they were responsible for loosing a pandemic on the world, and when they (unsurprisingly) said no, Bloomberg reported it as fact. @forbes did the same. pic.twitter.com/zcARwHe8dt
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
@Reuters did the same thing but perhaps worse.
Again: it seems inconceivable to me that so many outlets would take a virology lab run by a hostile autocratic power at their word as a source of truth on what happened.
But lots of them did. pic.twitter.com/H2etyYystC
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
I don’t have much space for blue checks because the media coverage to me is the bigger point here. But I did want to point out that lots of Twitter doctors & professors (potentially the same ones quoted in these pieces) were saying the same.
Here’s an example from @ShamikaRavi: pic.twitter.com/D6oreu3D42
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
And of course the usual conspiracy theorists like @MaxBlumenthal had their own perspectives on this one, that just happened to neatly fit all of their priors about the world and how it works (a consistent theme in this thread). pic.twitter.com/y7oXoLjH4g
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
And with @JRubinBlogger there’s always, always a tweet. pic.twitter.com/FPcAdpNBEm
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
Do we know for certain how the pandemic started? No, and it isn’t clear that we ever will. I tried to give a lot of leeway on this one given that.
But as you can see, the narrative was strong, the dismissal of other ideas was near-religious, and now it’s as if it never happened.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
Events like this do infinitely more to undermine America’s faith in experts and the media than anything Trump could ever do or say. And it’s all both self-inflected and avoidable.
But too many people can’t seem to help themselves. And whole industries suffer as a result.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
And remember, all of this is coming from the same people who purport to be deeply concerned with the supposed plague of mis- and disinformation.@NellieBowles puts it perfectly: https://t.co/LugkwwvTVp
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
This situation had many of the classic elements of bad reporting of late: uncritically trusting dishonest sources, rushing to a conclusion because it would hurt President Trump, media circular logic.
And it had an unsurprising result: a huge & quickly memoryholed media failure.
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) May 18, 2021
And that same media just continues to fail and fail and keep on reporting anyway.
Related:
THIS! –> AG takes media APART for vilifying Tom Cotton for being RIGHT about China and COVID-19 in receipt-filled thread https://t.co/F52WqOocyQ
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) April 3, 2020
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