It’s interesting to imagine how the lab-leak hypothesis story might’ve developed if MSM professional norms didn’t discourage stating that one party is systematically more dishonest than the other and its claims should thus be subject to greater scrutiny.
If you can do that, then you can essentially cut bad actors like Trump and Cotton and their enablers out of the informational loop and probe the question of the virus’s origins without feeding the perception that you’re being punked by liars.
If you can’t, then you’re stuck reporting the claim as one pole of a debate against “science,” and actual scientists are thrust into the position not just of weighing certainty about hypotheses, but keeping a lid on propaganda they fear may be used to harm people or start a war.
Seems obvious to me national media would’ve been way better off saying experts believe the lab-leak hypothesis is unlikely, and the proponents of it include highly dishonest people, but we’ll keep an open mind, rather than ‘Trump says X, science disagrees.’
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