That the Covid pandemic could’ve leaked from a lab in Wuhan went from terrible, racist conspiracy theory to plausible overnight for the mainstream media, without a shred of accountability.
If you don’t believe me, look at these stories side-by-side, then vs. now⤵️
You may remember that much of the really bad coverage was focused on @SenTomCotton’s suggestion that we better understand the potential for a lab leak from Wuhan.
The difference in framing here from @nytimes between May 2020 and May 2021 is...stark.
But it wasn’t just NYT. There’s a lot of ammo from @CNN, too.
Not even two months ago, they ran a piece writing off the lab leak theory as “like something out of a comic book.”
Yesterday, the tone had changed, without any reference to their own role in the previous debate.
But if you go back further, @CNN’s coverage gets even worse.
Early in 2020, they ran CCP talking points suggesting it was all a political tactic based on “disinformation.”
A little over a year later, CNN is asking the same questions President Trump and his team were panned for.
@ChrisCillizza has been a key voice for @CNN on this. In February 2020, he cited a CNN factchecker who concluded you can “say that didn’t happen” about the lab leak.
Yesterday, he seemed baffled that Dr. Fauci wasn’t entirely on his side anymore.
So much for “trust the science”
I can’t say this enough. In early 2020, @washingtonpost accused @SenTomCotton of “fanning the embers of a conspiracy theory repeatedly debunked by experts” for asking the same questions the Post’s reporting is currently asking.
And for some reason @washingtonpost’s timeline of events just so happens to omit their own “fact check” of the lab leak theory from April 2020 that concluded “the balance of the scientific evidence strongly suggests the conclusion that the new coronavirus emerged from nature.”
@politico had a quicker about-face than most. While they decried that the Wuhan lab was “at the center of conspiracy theories about the pandemic’s origin,” in March 2021 they resurfaced worries about “risky coronavirus experiments” from 2018.
Wonder why “no one listened.”
Much of the problem originally was that so many outlets relied on less than trustworthy sources - like the lab itself - to reject the lab leak theory & render it a “conspiracy theory.”
Even @Reuters, who doesn’t usually make the threads, did this. It was unbelievably pervasive.
I don’t know how else to put it. @NPR was awful about this one.
In April 2020, the story was “scientists debunk lab accident theory” but in March 2021 the idea suddenly “takes on new life”.
Did anyone consider who killed the original theory? I have an idea.
I’ve talked often about how the media has an enormous power in shaping narratives through framing.
Here’s an example from @thehill. Trump is portrayed as acting in bad faith (“efforts to blame China for the virus”) and then that framing gets jettisoned when no longer necessary.
For @BBCNews, the lab leak theory went from a conspiracy theory on par with China’s suggestion that the US created the virus to “all hypotheses are on the table” without an ounce of self awareness.
Again, why did no one at @BusinessInsider stop to consider whether the director of the lab that had just been accused (by the leader of the free world) of starting a once in a century plague might not be telling the entire truth?
Seems something changed since.
Unfortunately there was a lot to work with for @BusinessInsider. I couldn’t help but include these two pieces that haven’t exactly aged perfectly.
The extent to which the mainstream media trusted the lab in Wuhan at their word is jarring. @FortuneMagazine was just one of many.
But it’s also impossible to ignore - both here and in general - that the contrast is always between Wuhan and President Trump. More on that later.
The worst part of all of this (except for the damage to public trust, of course) is the absolute lack of accountability.
The media totally blew it on this story in ways that could make it less likely that we ever get to the bottom of this. Without offering so much as an apology.
There have been a couple of exceptions. The best in my estimation is this piece from @jonathanchait that tracks through some of the bad coverage in a way that doesn’t make excuses: google.com/amp/s/nymag.co…
But broadly, the old reporting went down the memoryhole and has already been incinerated. No lessons will be learned. No improvements will be made. This will happen again.
And it will continue to be everyday Americans who suffer the impact of bad information.
My (unsolicited) postmortem: the idea that President Trump could’ve been right about something this important w/o definitive public proof was something journos and newsrooms simply could not bring themselves to take seriously.
Instead, because they hated Trump so much, they preferred to trust a lab run by shadowy hostile autocrats who had every incentive to lie (and long history of lying) about something that could turn out to be the most consequential coverup in living memory.
That’s...not good.
But these are precisely the sorts of blind spots we should expect from a collection of people who all share the same worldview. Until that changes - until we get more perspectives/people who don’t have those blind spots - all of this will continue to get worse.
And these aren’t all the bad takes. I did another thread last week with even more, it’s just that not every outlet has done an about face (yet).
I have a feeling this thread will get longer, unfortunately.
Okay, this one blew up so I’ll reup that I finally broke down and made a Patreon. If you’ve ever felt urged to throw me some beer money, link is below.
Probably goes without saying but, after all of this, Biden’s decision to shut down the probe into the lab leak theory doesn’t look great. google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.…
Also this piece and thread by @mattyglesias is really good.
The media are melting down about former FBI director Jim Comey’s indictment, calling it Trump’s “retribution.”
But if prosecuting a political rival is such an outrage, why’d they cheer along when Biden went after Trump, Bannon & Navarro?
Some side-by-sides ⤵️
I want you to help me spot the difference in tone.
With Comey, @CNN put five — five! — reporters on the byline to declare the indictment was an “escalation” in “Trump’s effort to prosecute his political enemies.”
Where was that when Biden’s DOJ indicted Bannon? “A victory”
And @CNN wasn’t any better on Peter Navarro, another Trump aide indicted under Biden.
Rather than an “effort to prosecute…political enemies,” CNN quoted the prosecutor to tell the story.
Why is the claim of the government the framing of the piece under Biden? I have a guess.
The outrage over Kimmel’s canning is incredibly stupid, but it’s also enormously rich coming from the same media outlets who have cheered the government actually censoring people, particularly during COVID.
Let me know if you can spot the difference in tone? ⤵️
This @CNN headline made me think this story needed a thread.
Kimmel’s suspension is “straight from a European strongman’s playbook,” per @CNN’s @brianstelter.
When Biden cracked down on free speech during Covid, CNN hyped up the effort.
Few promoted the government’s actual attack on free speech more aggressively than the same @brianstelter now calling a comedian’s shelving evidence of autocracy, or something.
I know there’s a lot going on but we just had a media conspiracy implode that I think captures something important about the corporate press.
Did you hear about how Trump was allegedly going after John Bolton as retribution for his criticism?
Well…follow along ⤵️
We saw a week straight of media suggestions that Trump was abusing the powers of the state to deal out “retribution” to John Bolton following the news that the FBI (“Trump’s DOJ!” headlines rang out) raided his house.
We were in “unsettling” times, to hear @nytimes tell it.
The *Editorial Board* at @nytimes put out an even more dramatic statement, asking who Trump’s next payback victim after Bolton would be.
A single poll has bootstrapped a media narrative that DC residents are outraged by Trump’s takeover.
I poked around the cross tabs of the poll — of 600 or so of DC’s more comfortable residents — and I think it’s pretty suspect.
How come? Follow along: ⤵️
Let’s start with the poll. The @washingtonpost talked to 604 people, of whom 90% — 90%! — self-described as living in “very good” or “good” neighborhoods.
So, fine. 80% of people who like where they live in DC are upset.
But even beyond that, it’s worth asking whether this poll really captures DC’s opinion.
In the poll, only 31% describe crime as a “serious” or “very serious” problem in DC.
When @washingtonpost asked this same question in May, *50%* said it was a serious problem.
I feel like I’m losing my mind about the Biden autopen pardons.
The former president said he made every decision. His staff says that he didn’t actually make the final call on thousands of them.
We’re supposed to treat this as normal?
I try to unpack. ⤵️
This got new life from a Biden interview w/ @nytimes.
NYT leads by repeating Biden’s claim that he made the calls…burying the admissions that 1) he really didn’t & 2) where he allegedly did, the aids sending details to the autopen weren’t in the room when the call was made…
…instead, they relied on what senior staff had allegedly heard, which was then passed along.
The piece ends with the revelation that Biden’s then-chief of staff gave the final sign off.
Given what the former admin has lied about, why should we trust this reporting of events?
The coverage of the anti-ICE riots in LA is perhaps the clearest example of advocacy “journalism” in Trump’s second term.
Reading the reporting, you would never know the most significant fact: the American people support Trump’s deportations.
Follow along ⤵️
First, the facts about the riots.
You’ve seen the burning cars, looting & clashes between police & protestors.
Demonstrators blocked the freeway, attacked ICE agents, all in an effort to prevent the deportations of illegal aliens. Trump deployed troops to allow ICE to operate.
As @MarkHalperin and @seanspicer discussed, the situation in LA is so tranquil that the mayor has instituted a curfew for the city.