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@mbalter — investigations and commentary Profile picture
@mbalter
Jun 13 • 4 tweets • 1 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
The correct journalistic response to this report and the earlier one in the [London] Times is to talk to sources and try to confirm the details—not to dismiss it, poo-poo it, or otherwise try to ignore it. The leaks may become a torrent. public.substack.com/p/first-people…
2/ My guess, and I could be wrong, is that the leaks we are seeing are from intel sources who know what information is being declassified and feel more free to discuss it as a result. We shall know soon. #media
3/ If those sources will talk to the Times and the Public reporters, they will talk to the NYT and WaPo if they simply make inquiries. Now is the time for followup reporting. If lab origin turns out to be true, we will expect mea culpas from all those who…
4/ tried to mislead the public by calling it a “conspiracy theory,” and I would hope further consequences for those who knew it wasn’t all along.

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More from @mbalter

@mbalter — investigations and commentary Profile picture
Jun 14
1/ As the story about the Wuhan Inst Virology researchers who allegedly contracted #COVID19 in fall 2019 races around the world, it also raises some questions about the mainstream #media in the U.S. As the deadline for declassifying intel on Covid origins arrives…
2/ in just days, it was a no-brainer for journalists to start talking to sources in the intel community about what was in them, or even what might be redacted if that is likely to happen. The appears to be just what reporters at the (London) Times have done, and also…
3/ at Public, an alternative site. Why were they first with this story rather than @nytimes or @washingtonpost? Have reporters from those and other major media not been talking to intel sources, or have they been doing so but coming up with different information?
Read 10 tweets
@mbalter — investigations and commentary Profile picture
Jun 12
1/ I’ve said this before, but again: The role of mainstream science #journalism in the #COVID19 origins debate has been a major fail for the field, the worst one since I have been a science journalist myself (40+ years.) Most science writers decided from the beginning that…
2/ a lab or research-related origin was a “conspiracy theory” and “disinformation” without actually doing any real reporting on the origins question—simply relying on quotes from leading virologists and other scientists who—as it turned out—had a vested interest…
3/ in the outcome. That left the real investigative reporting on Covid origins to independent reporters and other investigators, who dug up lots of relevant information which the mainstream journalists then proceeded to either ignore, or continue to quote scientists with…
Read 9 tweets
@mbalter — investigations and commentary Profile picture
Jun 11
My hunch is that when the intel is declassified, and if there are not too many redactions, this is basically what it will say. The whistleblowers are giving us a preview and also trying to keep the intel agencies honest. thetimes.co.uk/article/inside…
2/ The meltdown over this article by some members of the international raccoon dog team (whose work has been largely discredited) is quite amazing in its desperate vitriol. They see their credibility rapidly disintegrating. Science should not be able defending a position.
3/ Here’s how you can tell a real journalist from a faker. The real journalists will immediately start to do followup reporting on the Times report, and come out with their own stories. The fake journalists will immediately take to Twitter to poo-poo the report.
Read 5 tweets
@mbalter — investigations and commentary Profile picture
Jun 4
1/ One of the many flaws in #media coverage of the #COVID19 pandemic is the very narrow focus of the “experts” used as sources in the reporting. Virologists are usually considered the number one go-to scientists, with physicians and public health officials a close second…
2/ But actually, understanding a pandemic (or any public health issue for that matter) requires the input of many specialties, including epidemiologists, immunologists, cell and molecular biologists, microbiologists, geneticists, statisticians, and then…
3/ scholars in the social sciences, including sociologists, psychologists, historians of science, philosophers of science, and so forth. To circle back, many virologists have militantly tried to claim this subject matter as their domain and only their domain, but journalists…
Read 7 tweets
@mbalter — investigations and commentary Profile picture
Jun 3
1/ This followup story by @KatherineJWu in @TheAtlantic, updating her original piece on the raccoon dog story in the magazine, is much better, and seemingly much more balanced. But I say “seemingly” because in reality it has some serious shortcomings. theatlantic.com/science/archiv…
2/ Most importantly, while it argues that scientists interpret new data thru the lens of their preconceptions and biases—something that is undoubtedly true—it fails to evaluate whether the original claims that raccoon dogs had been linked to the Covid virus was…
3/ exaggerated, possibly even deliberately, by the raccoon dog team. Rather Wu goes from a very slanted perspective in her first piece to posing as a neutral referee in the debate in the second piece. It is understandable why Wu (and other reporters) would do this:
Read 11 tweets
@mbalter — investigations and commentary Profile picture
Jun 1
1/ In this @VanityFair piece by @KatherineEban, French researcher Florence Debarre is quoted as saying the headline in @KatherineJWu’s story in @TheAtlantic about the raccoon dog “findings” being the “strongest evidence yet” for a market origin of the pandemic was “ridiculous.”
2/ Yet the question remains how Wu and her editors got this idea, which a spokesperson for the magazine basically stood by both in a statement to Eban and an earlier statement to me for an article in Quill (the @spj_tweets magazine.) The answer may lie with another question…
3/ which is who tipped Wu off to the analysis of the “international team” in the first place. My hunch is that whoever did that tipped off reporters at @nytimes and @ScienceMagazine at close to the same time, because both publications were able to get stories up the same day.
Read 10 tweets

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