Josh Rogin thread pulls back curtain on how and why reporters dumped on lab leak theories (all while 'pretending to be objective')

Doug P. | 2:59 PM on May 29, 2021

For most of last year and part of this year, many media outlets, reporters and commentators mocked, ridiculed and deemed any claim that Covid-19 could have come from a Chinese lab as a “debunked conspiracy theory.” Some of those same alleged journalists are now spinning like tops to pretend they approached those kinds of claims in an objective fashion.

Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin has a thread that diagnoses what was really going on with much of the MSM:

Most MSM reporters didn’t “ignore” the lab leak theory, they actively crapped all over it for over a year while pretending to be objective out of a toxic mix of confirmation bias, source bias (their scientist sources lied to them), group think, TDS and general incompetence.

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) May 29, 2021

Also, the lab leak theory didn’t change. It didn’t suddenly become credible. It didn’t jump from crazy to reasonable. The theory has always been the same. The people who got it wrong changed their minds. They are writing about themselves, with zero self awareness.

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) May 29, 2021

All these reporters scrambling to defend their own records on the lab leak theory are exposing their own hypocrisy & ignoring their basic error. Just report the facts. Don’t act like its your job to tell us whats ok to think or talk about. Own up to it when you fail your readers.

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) May 29, 2021

Most of “journalism” is full of activists who push arguments rather than report facts.

A 100% correct thread for anyone trying to make sense of the nonsense media narrative that the possibility of COVID starting with a Wuhan lab leak WASN’T credible but suddenly IS. https://t.co/Y7EBnkz84X

— Cliff Sims (@Cliff_Sims) May 29, 2021

The problem isn't journalists are bad at journalism. The problem is they don't know what journalism is. And, and Thomas Sowell would say, they don't know what thinking is either. They think feeling is thinking, a piece paper is an education, and political activism is journalism.

— J (@ARaised_Eyebrow) May 29, 2021

Trump was right about the mainstream media the whole time.