Thread by @DrewHolden360

🧵THREAD🧵

The NIH announced a bombshell: despite what Dr. Fauci said under oath, US taxpayers paid for gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

I hope that outlets will correct the record from when they assured us this wasn’t happening.

If they’ve forgotten, I’ve got screenshots⤵️

First, a bit of context. Today, NIH contradicted Dr Fauci & others, clarifying that a grantee, the EcoHealth Alliance, had conducted research (supposedly w/o NIH knowing) to see if bat coronavirus could jump to human receptors in mice.

More details here: nypost.com/2021/10/21/nih…

You may remember a dust up in July between Dr. Fauci & @RandPaul around precisely this point.

It seems inarguable that what Fauci told Congress isn’t true. And the press uncritically helped him convince the American people otherwise. Look at how @CNBC frames it:

Some places were even worse.

Does @CNN still think that Fauci “excorciated” Senator Paul, when we now know that @RandPaul was right all along?

Will we get any follow up? Or perhaps an apology for Senator Paul?

You may remember that we had an entire news cycle about how Fauci had owned Paul.

The worst had to be @MSNBC, who ran a full court press to discredit Paul and applaud Fauci.

Here’s how it started:

But then they doubled down across the network.

Perhaps @maddow/@MaddowBlog would like to revisit the assertion that “if the senator thinks the exchanges are going well for him, he’s mistaken”?

I mean, @MSNBC even had a follow up with Fauci where they intro’d the video as “Slander”! Cmon!

This interview was courtesy of @AriMelber. Needless to say, he didn’t exactly grill Fauci in this one.

In retrospect, it sure seems like a tougher question or two might’ve been in order.

Maybe Dr. Fauci will be invited back on to discuss the latest news?

(@Newsweek and others actually picked up this interview as it’s own separate news item, again treating Fauci’s word as gospel)

You guys are surely sick of me talking about this, but this is yet another example of the power of media to frame stories.

By choosing to focus only on what Fauci had to say, it conveys that there is only one side of this debate worth believing. That’s clearly not true. @nytimes

We saw something similar from @washingtonpost, who reiterated that experts had repeatedly dismissed these allegations.

Will we get a follow up now that NIH has corrected the record?

The @washingtonpost story links to a fact check from @GlennKesslerWP where Senator Paul’s allegations - which, again, have since been confirmed by NIH - are given two pinnochios for supposedly being untruthful.

Will we be getting a follow up on that, Glenn?

Not only does @NBCNews make use of this same framing - Fauci was said to be “rebuking Paul’s claim” - but they end the piece with Fauci saying “I have not lied. Case closed.”

Seems clear how they wanted readers to interpret the coverage.

@Reuters goes even a step further on this, not just featuring only Dr. Fauci’s perspective, but blaming Sen Paul for causing Fauci to lose his “mostly calm and diplomatic” bearing.

Sheesh.

There are too many outlets to mention here who covered this poorly, but a couple additional ones stand out, such as:

@VanityFair (embarrassing)
@ABC (“misinformation” plus look at the created graphic)
@DEADLINE
@factcheckdotorg (“There’s no evidence that Fauci lied to Congress”)

I don’t have space here to give detailed shoutouts for all the bluechecks involved in the resulting pile-on, but here are a few people with egg on their face:

@DrEricDing
@RexChapman (head, meet desk)
@CapehartJ

And of course a number of our fan favorites jumped into the melee with some tweets that didn’t age well.

@ananavarro (woof)
@SethAbramson (always)
@atrupar (go figure, check out both of these)

Okay, I had to shout out @ProjectLincoln, who are seemingly never right about anything.

And can someone check on @Laurie_Garrett? Unhinged.

Some might say that media are only as good as their sources: if the authority on this wasn’t truthful, how could the media know better?

The problem, however, is that there was never even a shred of incredulity. The press took the government at its word and moved on.

It should go without saying, but this is simply an inexcusable way to handle getting to the bottom of whether American taxpayers were responsible for funding research that could’ve contributed to a global pandemic that has killed millions of people.

What if all adds up to is blatant media malpractice on the most consequential story in recent memory.

Given the NIH has now corrected the record, these outlets have a responsibility to do so as well.

But something tells me we won’t be hearing much at all from them.

This one went off so for new folks/those asking, I don’t have anything to sell or subscribe to.

But if you’re able, food banks remain in desperate need of support. For those in DC (or otherwise) I think Capital Area Food Bank does great work: give.capitalareafoodbank.org/give/332469/?g…

For more, this thread from @R_H_Ebright - and his responses to questions and challenges below - are well worth your time.