Thread by @DrewHolden360

🧵THREAD🧵

Fauci’s lab leak coverup couldn’t have happened without the help of legacy media.

Do you remember how far outlets went to claim the lab leak was a conspiracy?

I’ve got the screenshots. ⤵️

Do you remember when @TomCottonAR was repeating a “fringe theory” that “scientists have dismissed”?

An explosive take for the dumb online rubes, right @nytimes?

I think this tweet, from a former @nytimes science writer captures it well.

Or what about @washingtonpost, who said that @TomCottonAR “keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked.”

“Scientists Debunk Lab Accident Theory of Pandemic Emergence” was the @NPR headline.

Has a story been more wrong in the Internet era?

Has someone been fired for this, @ABC?

Is whoever wrote this headline still writing headlines for your outlet?

Is there any reason anyone should trust your outlet if so?

At @USATODAY, the “fact checker” claimed that even the suggestion that “the coronavirus may have originated in a Chinese laboratory” was “False.”

The @AP said that the idea that “the virus was leaked” was a “conspiracy theory” as part of the “Debunked COVID-19 myths survive online, despite facts.”

All of this was wrong at the time. It looks even worse in hindsight.

So much of this condescending dismissal was in the service of Fauci. Here’s @CBS trumpeting how the good doctor “dismisses Wuhan lab as source of coronavirus.”

Where was the journalism? Why should an outlet take his claim without question?

And of course so much of the legacy media vitriol was inspired by Trump.

Here’s @ABC testing their garments about Trump’s pulling funding from the “Wuhan lab at heart of conspiracy theories.”

I will never let @CNN and @ChrisCillizza forget this shameful headline.

Who are you having on your show to actually make sense of this theory, @chrislhayes?

How could the dumb rubes believe this “conspiracy theory about the origins of the coronavirus” huh, @voxdotcom?

On the subject of apologies needed, I think outlets like @washingtonpost, @CNN, @NBCNews and @VanityFair owe @RandPaul a serious apology for their treatment of him in 2021 (and thereafter).

Just look at these headlines. @BusinessInsider @NatGeo @washingtonpost

Don’t you guys have any shame? Any at all?

I’ve said it before but I’ll keep repeating it: this is the biggest media failure of my lifetime, and if there isn’t some accountability, some shame, some changes made, the credibility the legacy media once had, I think, won’t ever come back.