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Media "Fact Checkers" are changing their stories. Virus may be leaked from a lab.

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
Could all the conspiracy theories be right?
Could virtually every mainstream media source be wrong?
Could all the "fact check" websites be wrong?

Looks like there is more and more evidence coming out that the media narrative may be wrong. Washington Post and Politifact have been caught changing the "facts" and quietly editing their fact checks about the origins of the Chinese Flu, the Wuhan Flu and the Kung Flu. It now seems very plausible that Covid-19 is a man created virus and that is may have actually escaped from a lab, partially funded by the US government and authorized by Dr Fauci.

Got to thank the major media for being so honest about the reporting.

FULL STORY, LINKS, TWITTER evidence image captures, etc at ZeroHedge ==> https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/...glenn-kessler-heckled-over-lab-leak-flip-flop

WaPo Head 'Fact Checker' Glenn Kessler Heckled Over Lab-Leak Flip-Flop

With the COVID-19 'lab leak' theory finally gaining mainstream legitimacy following recent reports from the Wall Street Journal, and an admission by Anthony Fauci that he's now open to the possibility, formerly smug establishment 'fact checkers' are now scrambling to salvage their reputations after categorically dismissing a lab leak as a 'debunked conspiracy theory.'

The latest 'fact checker' to bend the knee is the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler - who last year issued a snarky tweet to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in response to Cruz accusing WaPo of "abandoning all pretenses of journalism to produce CCP propaganda" in response to Kessler promoting a video suggesting that an accidental lab leak was 'doubtful.'

"We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves," Kessler sniped at Cruz.

Fast forward one year, and Kessler is the proud owner of a highly ratio'd tweet after being forced to eat crow over his 'fact checking' with a new article entitled "How the Wuhan lab-leak theory suddenly became credible."



Kessler's destroyed credibility did not go unnoticed:


May 2020: UNLIKELY https://t.co/w2CjAtFzHG

May 2021: CREDIBLE
— Razor (@hale_razor) May 25, 2021
Speaking on the issue of destroyed credibility over early Wuhan reporting and CCP apologists is retired New York Times science editor, Nicholas Wade, who slammed the MSM on Sunday for failing to investigate the origins of COVID-19.

According to Wade, the media failed to "take off its political glasses" and see beyond facts which are being obscured by the Chinese Communist Party.

"'I think we see a sustained Chinese propaganda effort at work," said Wade, who was a staff writer for the Science Times section of the NYT from 1982 to 2012, in an interview with Mark Levin on "Life, Liberty & Levin."

"But, you know, more than that, it was just the blindness, if I could put it that way, of our media — we're too polarized to see scientific issues for their own sake without putting a political gloss on them," Wade continued. "We don't know for sure: The origin of the virus is just we've got these two possible scenarios. But if you look at all the evidence and ask yourself, well, which scenario explains all these facts better on present evidence, it seems, to me at least, that the lab-escape hypothesis explains it a lot better."

"But it's a sort of complicated conclusion to arrive at, and I can only assume that the media was blindsided, they didn't do the work that was necessary."

Let's not mince words Wade, the Media opposed the lab leak theory because President Trump promoted it, and the CCP has its tentacles deeply embedded in American propagandists who breathlessly peddle their talking points.
 

FrancSevin

Proudly Deplorable
GOLD Site Supporter
Remember when the Chinese media blamed the USA military for the virus? How close to the truth is that?
 

pirate_girl

legendary ⚓
GOLD Site Supporter
President Trump just posted this on gab.
20210525_132217.jpg
 

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
And another article, also from a minor source, but this article has now been cited on a fairly popular watchdog website. So maybe the story will gain a small amount of traction?



Don’t let the media get away with U-turning on the lab leak theory

lab
The theory that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory has completed its year-long trudge — from fringe nutjob idea to mainstream and expert-approved opinion.
Leading scientists and epidemiologists such as none other than Dr Anthony Fauci were so quick to dismiss the ‘lab talk’. It was first portrayed as a hare-brained wild and tacitly racist conspiracy theory driven by paranoid Republican senators and fever-dream right-wing media. Now it is seen as not only an acceptable theory worth more study, but one that has broken through into the mainstream. This has happened in a matter of days. Where does Sen. Tom Cotton go for his apology?
Interestingly enough, the lab leak theory started gaining more traction — not only in the international community, but in the scientific community in the United States — right around the same time that questions of United States government funding of EcoHealth Alliance, a research and collection group of bat coronaviruses in China, may have lead to gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Anthony Fauci denied that this research was happening in Wuhan with US knowledge but went on to also acknowledge that US officials don’t really have any idea what’s happening in the lab, thanks to the secretive nature of China’s communist government — a regime that has so far successfully put off the pressing questions as to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Almost instantaneously, respectable media voices have switched from writing off the lab leak theory to believing that is somewhere closer to probable than possible. How does that happen?
A group of 18 scientists, including one who worked in the Wuhan lab, penned a letterto Science magazine stating the lab leak theory needed to be investigated further.
Then Donald McNeil Jr, the former New York Times science writer wrote an extensive explanation of gain-of-function research (the scientific manipulation of proteins in a virus to make it more susceptible for human transmission) and why that it’s possible that this research was being conducted at the Wuhan lab.
Shortly after that post, the dominos began to fall. Just this weekend, Anthony Fauci himself, who has long derided the lab leak theory, changed his tune as well, saying that he’s not confident that the virus did not escape a lab.
Fauci was one of the go-to sources for media eager to write off the theory altogether. News outlets such as NPR said in April 2020 that the theory had been ‘debunked’. The Washington Post called it a ‘conspiracy theory that was already debunked’.
The Wuhan lab director called it a ‘pure fabrication’ in Forbes. Well, she would, wouldn’t she? What was stranger was the western media’s willingness to take such an obviously compromised figure at her word.
Reuters took China’s lead, using China itself as a source for the debunking. Lots of the American media appeared reflexively to side with any news story that was at odds with President Trump or made him look bad. ‘Anthony Fauci just crushed Donald Trump’s theory on the origins of the coronavirus,’ wrote noted follower of science Chris Cillizza on the CNN website. Plus ça change.
What’s more interesting is that minds are now shifting on the lab leak theory, without all that much significant new evidence. Only after the media conversation changed did a blockbuster report emerge in the Wall Street Journal describing how three workers at the Wuhan lab, had sought hospital care after experiencing severe respiratory problems way back in November 2019. This was based on previously unreleased intelligence — the very stuff Republican leaders were dismissed as cranks for alluding to early last year.
While there is still only an amount of circumstantial evidence pointing to the lab theory, there is more and more smoke around the fire. Our corporate media is going to stuff this down the memory hole and make their previous statements and stances disappear. Experts, cable news hosts and opinion writers are going to move on as though they hadn’t spent the last year labeling anyone who attempted to even explore this theory as a lunatic. Dr Anthony Fauci was one of those people. He should not be allowed to get away with it.
 

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
And now this, from a favored new source of middle right Republicans:



Tom Cotton deserves an apology

| May 24, 2021 04:43 PM
If Donald Trump had listened to Tom Cotton in January of 2020, he would likely still be president today. But while the rest of the Hill obsessed over the (first) impeachment proceedings against Trump, the Arkansas senator was trying to sound the alarm about the novel coronavirus. Cotton was right when he repeatedly warned the White House that China was actively concealing the extent and nature of the virus, and he was right when he questioned its origins.

Neither Trump nor the media took the virus seriously when Cotton tried to warn the world. Key Trump allies encouraged him to ignore the pandemic, fearing a strong response's potential impact on the next phases of his trade deal with Beijing and his electoral odds. Less responsible news outlets such as the Washington Post and BuzzFeed mocked that we ought to worry more about the flu.

And even as the coronavirus exploded into a complete pandemic, Cotton was written off as a conspiracy-theorizing Cassandra for pointing out the likelihood that SARS-Cov-2 had emerged from a Chinese lab, likely the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

"We don’t have evidence that this disease originated there, but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says," Cotton said during a February 2020 Fox News hit. "China right now is not giving evidence on that question at all." Cotton was speaking specifically of China's only BSL-4 lab, one that we already knew was conducting gain-of-function experiments on novel coronaviruses.

Last April, we already had most of the evidence we have today establishing circumstantial ties between SARS-CoV-2 and the WIV. We already knew that the WIV's "batwoman," Shi Zhengli, had experimented on RaTG13, the virus's closest known natural relative. Josh Rogin at the Washington Post then broke the news that in 2018, diplomats had sent cables to the State Department, warning that the lab's gain-of-function experiments on coronaviruses were extremely risky. Furthermore, we knew that the Chinese Communist regime had gone to great lengths to conceal the virus's origins and lock down the lab.

And yet, the Washington Post proudly branded Cotton's lab leak hypothesis as an "already-debunked" conspiracy theory. The New York Times deemed it a "fringe" theory widely "dismissed" by scientists. By both scientists and the press, Cotton was written off first as a fearmonger and then as a kook. Given the Chinese Communists' stranglehold over the World Health Organization, it seemed possible that we would never get the discussion we needed about the origins of the virus.

But now that Trump is out of office, the media have slowly but surely deemed it safe to raise the topic again. We have learned almost nothing new about the virus's origins since one year ago, but now the public health "experts" and the press are finally taking the lab-leak hypothesis seriously.

Cotton asked all the right questions while the rest of the Beltway obsessed over stupid Trumpian palace intrigues and petty partisan fights. He was the leader we needed when we weren't ready to listen. He deserves an apology from the media and the scientists who smeared him. Any insistence otherwise is driven by pure political animus.
 

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
And even Yahoo!News picked up a version of the Tom Cotton Apology story (a couple of these variants exist in mostly right of center news sites). The "Tom Cotton Apology" stories are a side story to the lab created virus story, but the widen the interest and spread of the lab created story.






The Media Owe Senator Tom Cotton an Apology

April 3, 2020​
62582da292b36448cd159ab07e0a7a25
One of the biggest issues people have with the mainstream press these days is that some of its members are so insulated that they end up buying into and promoting false narratives without actually checking these narratives’ veracity. That seems to be exactly what happened in mid February, when major outlets overwhelmingly smeared Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) as a conspiracy theorist for asking legitimate questions about the origins of the current COVID-19 pandemic.​
Cotton was one of the first politicians to raise the alarm about the seriousness of COVID-19 and the dishonesty of the Chinese government, as NRO’s John McCormack has pointed out. Cotton emphasized at the time that China was not being transparent about the virus and its origins. Cotton further noted that Wuhan, which was the main location for the first outbreak, had a biosafety Level 4 laboratory that specializes in researching coronaviruses. Cotton specifically said that “we don’t have evidence that the disease originated there, but because of China’s duplicity and dishonesty from the beginning, we need to at least ask the question to see what the evidence says.”​
It’s hard to see anything controversial about what Cotton said, but the press quickly twisted it into an unrecognizable and conspiratorial claim that they then proceeded to debunk.​
Media outlets overwhelmingly declared Cotton was spreading dangerous conspiracy theories. The Washington Post insisted, “Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked.” The New York Times, the Daily Beast, and other outlets repeated the same framing. Countless other members of the mediaand prominent commentators accused Cotton of being irresponsible and spreading dangerous claims. In perhaps the most embarrassing display, CBS’s Face the Nationhad the Chinese ambassador on and set him up to label Cotton’s suggestion “absolutely crazy”.​
How did the media end up declaring that Cotton was spreading a debunked conspiracy theory? By completely distorting what he said.​
All those media outlets cited experts to declare that there was no evidence the virus was man-made or a bioweapon, which is a claim that Cotton never actually made. In almost every article, they cite Richard Ebright, a professor of chemical biology at Rutgers and one of the leading biosecurity experts in the world, to dismiss the possibility that the virus was a bioweapon. They do not address Cotton’s actual claim. That’s because Enright has repeatedly acknowledged, and recently reconfirmed, that it is a very real possibility that the COVID-19 spread began at the Wuhan lab. The very same expert they were using to “debunk” Cotton’s question and smear him as a conspiracy theorist actually agreed that it was legitimate. There are plenty of reasons to ask the question and demand transparency from China’s government given its dishonesty, the history of similar viruses escaping from Chinese labs, and the specific research focus of that particular lab.​
Now the Washington Post has published another piece acknowledging that “scientists don’t rule out that an accident at a research laboratory in Wuhan might have spread a deadly bat virus that had been collected for scientific study.” In other words, they are now publishing the very claim that they insisted was a debunked conspiracy theory a month and a half ago. None of the previous articles attacking Cotton have been retracted.​
How are people supposed to trust these outlets and media personalities when they are willing to create a false narrative about a U.S. senator and accuse him of being a conspiracy theorist for asking legitimate and necessary questions?​
All the outlets and commentators that attempted to smear Senator Tom Cotton owe him a public apology.​
 

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
Uh oh. The Chicago Tribune, a liberal major newspaper is now running the Wuhan Flu story and it is doing so with a twist!

The author is John Kass, he is very well known in Chicago as a loud voice who exposes B.S.


The Wuhan Story That Finally Has Legs, Now That Trump Is Gone

What are we learning about the American political-media establishment now that the origin story of the coronavirus pandemic appears to be radically changing?
The Wall Street Journal has been reporting on new developments out of China's Wuhan Institute of Virology. There's more on those researchers who became "sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report." The newspaper's reporting boosts efforts supporting a deeper investigation into the origins of the coronavirus illness.
We're also learning, and relearning, about institutional rot and the triumph of political ideology over analysis.
But will the political-media establishment of Washington use this moment to reexamine itself and reflect?
As we wait, more facts come out daily about the origins of the pandemic that led to the deaths of 3.4 million people worldwide, including some 500,000 in the U.S. It is without doubt the most important story of our time. And part of the job of citizens, of journalists and responsible political leaders, is to question assumptions.
Yet until quite recently, anyone who dared suggest that the virus may have leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China -- a theory that ran counter to the approved version of the Chinese Communist Party that someone ate or came in contact with an infected bat from a "wet market" -- were dismissed as dangerous, perhaps insane.
Some, such as Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, were smeared by Washington media as wild-eyed Republican conspiracy theorists infected with a highly contagious political virus that had to be stamped out lest others catch it.
"Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins," blared a New York Times headline in February 2020, saying such theories gain "traction among those who see China as a threat."
And there were many others just like it, including in The Washington Post, with the headline "Experts debunk fringe theory linking China's coronavirus to weapons research."
"Experts." Lazy reporting is what that word should connote when readers see it.
But now the worm is turning with reporting from The Wall Street Journal that three researchers became ill, sparking questions as to whether the COVID-19 virus that crushed lives and economies had escaped from that lab.
A May 5 essay in a science journal by Nicholas Wade, a former science writer from The New York Times, deals with the origin story and asks: "Did people or nature open Pandora's box at Wuhan?"
Why was it so important to cling to the wet market theory and demonize others? Was it that former President Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo, Trump's secretary of state, hinted that intelligence led them to believe it came from a lab?

The pandemic was the story of the election year. And the Democrats used it to hammer Trump's campaign. COVID-19, said Jane Fonda, was "God's gift to the left."
The other day, a talking head on CNN explained things:
"When this first was being reported and discussed, a few months after the pandemic had begun, then-President Donald Trump and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, both suggested they had seen evidence that this was formed in a lab. And they also suggested that it was not released on purpose. But they refused to release the evidence showing what it was. And because of that, that made this instantly political. I think this was, you know, example 1,000 when the Trump administration learned that when you have burned your credibility over and over again, people are not immediately going to believe you, especially in an election year. However, that does not mean it's not worth discussing."
That was Maggie Haberman of The New York Times twisting her way out of explaining why she, along with most other journalists, dismissed the possibility of a different origin story.
President Joe Biden insists he has a good personal relationship with China, though he's somewhat compromised by his son Hunter's business relationships there. Whether all this gives leverage to the president to reshape U.S.-China relations is something best left to foreign policy analysts.
But there's something else to consider:
The virus origin reset offers an extraordinary opportunity to the Washington establishment press a chance to reflect, reconsider and reassess its role as Kemalist guardians. But will the establishment political media culture take advantage of this reset?
This is the same media that treated President Barack Obama as something of a demigod. Many gushed over his Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, though he'd been on the job for only months. Besotted by Hopium, all the better to adore Obama, the establishment was shocked to its core when Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016.
That was the year of the anti-establishment insurgency. I knew she would not win. But I wasn't standing in Washington where it is impossible to see clearly.
The New York Times might no longer be the newspaper of record, but it is the newspaper of the establishment. Its editor, Dean Baquet, realized the paper's mistake on missing what was going on in the country following Trump's win.
"If I have a mea culpa for journalists and journalism, it's that we've got to do a much better job of being on the road, out in the country, talking to different kinds of people than the people we talk to -- especially if you happen to be a New York-based news organization -- and remind ourselves that New York is not the real world."
Such critical self-examination lasted only a few weeks. Because rather than explore it and understand the nation and the disconnect between the establishment Washington press and millions of Americans, the Democratic Party gave the media fresh meat to sink their teeth into:
Hillary Clinton was unfairly defeated because Trump was a tool of the Russians! The Russia collusion fantasy was beaten like a drum for years, and though it fizzled as a criminal matter, it was politically effective. Pulitzer Prizes were awarded and in general, those who perpetuated that Big Lie never really wanted to examine how they got played.
And then came COVID-19, which couldn't have come from a Chinese lab, we were assured. That story line might have helped Trump and the Republicans by shifting the focus to who was really at fault, China. That couldn't be allowed.
So, will the American political-media establishment use this as a moment of reflection?
Don't hold your breath.
 

300 H and H

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter

This is old news, from one year ago. Epoch times had this story a year ago. No reason for the MSM to not report. In fact not reporting this was a lie of omission, the most serious lie of all. :furious:

Exclusive Report] The First Documentary Movie on Tracking Down the Origin of CCP Virus(Coronavirus)​


54:07 min.


The Epoch Times

The Epoch Times

497K subscribers
As the world is gripped by the ongoing pandemic, many questions remain about the origin of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus—commonly known as the novel coronavirus. Join Epoch Times senior investigative reporter Joshua Philipp as he explores the known facts surrounding the CCP virus and the global pandemic it caused. In his investigation, Philipp explores the scientific data, and interviews top scientists and national security experts. And while the mystery surrounding the virus's origin remains, much is learned about the CCP's cover-up that led to the pandemic and the threat it poses to the world. Editor’s note on update to documentary From the start of the virus outbreak in China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has not been forthcoming with information about the virus. In the early days of the outbreak, medical professionals who sounded the alarm were reprimanded by police for spreading "rumors." Initially, the CCP said the virus originated at the Huanan Seafood Market, even though it knew patient zero had no connection with the market. Fearing that it might be held accountable for the worldwide pandemic, the CCP shifted its narrative to suggest that the virus originated in the United States and was brought to China by the U.S. military. As a leading voice in covering China for the past 20 years, we understand very well the CCP's deceptive nature and its history of cover-ups. With this outbreak, we saw a case of history repeating itself—in 2003, we exposed the CCP's cover-up of the SARS epidemic in China, far ahead of other media. In this documentary, we present viewers with the known scientific data and facts surrounding the origin of the virus along with experts’ opinions. We don't draw conclusions, but we point out that serious questions remain about the origins of the virus as well as the CCP's handling of the outbreak. Some of our viewers felt the #documentary was taking a position on the origin of the virus, which was not our intent. The documentary has been slightly updated as of April 14 to better reflect our position, which is not to provide a definitive answer, but rather to present the known facts.
 

Melensdad

Jerk in a Hawaiian Shirt & SNOWCAT Moderator
Staff member
GOLD Site Supporter
And the stories just keep on coming, rewriting history, changing their censorship policy at Facebook, etc. Trump was probably right, Tom Cotton was probably right, the media censored the truth, ridiculed the people trying to find the truth, censored the people who were simply asking questions.


That Didn't Age Well: Wuhan Propaganda From MSM Laid Bare

For nearly 18 months, the mainstream media engaged in journalistic malpractice - quashing any suggestion that COVID-19 could have originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, because their arch-nemesis, former President Trump, dared promote this very logical conclusion. Let's also not forget the deep ties Beijing has formed within the United States, which include universities, entertainment, sports leagues, and of course, Washington DC and its liberal surrogates.



So of course, once the lab-leak theory began to circulate in January, 2020, China's 'investments' in the United States paid off, and the entire liberal media industrial complex furiously peddled the 'natural origin' theory, while boldly proclaiming the lab origin hypothesis a 'debunked conspiracy theory.'

Apologies when?
That was until the last two weeks, starting with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) shredding Anthony Fauci over the NIH funding US research within the Wuhan lab, followed by a Wall Street Journal report that three WIV lab workers were hospitalized in December 2019 with COVID-19 symptoms.



And with that, the lab-leak hypothesis was legitimized almost overnight - sending liberal outlets scrambling to quietly append their previous reporting. This flood of hypocrisy was compiled into an epic Twitter thread by journalist Drew Holden:

Meanwhile, a SUPERCUT!

Expect no apologies, of course.
 

FrancSevin

Proudly Deplorable
GOLD Site Supporter
The next logical step in this exposure of the lies is to stop assuming the virus "escaped." I tire of hearing it put in those couched terms.

I'm not saying it didn't. I'm just suggesting the term "escape" allows some modicum of an un-intentional accident on the part of the Chinese.

WE DON'T ACTUALLY KNOW IF THAT IS TRUE.

Do we?
 

300 H and H

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
Intentional of not it can not be argued that when discovered the Chinese went into over drive snapping up all the PPE they could get their hands on before the rest of the world could. Taiwan so close by is the only nation to have actually escaped the wrath of this pandemic because they were prepared and in fact expected the Chinese might have this very issue.
Chinese actions tell the story. The choice they made was to let it infect the globe, and deny the lab escape, blaming a wet market for the problem.
Lying cheating stealing communists. They remind me of Democrats in to many ways....
China must be held accountable for this. I actually believe it was a plan by the CCP to boost the time line when they think they can achieve world dominance. :furious:

This could lead to a war with them. A war with casualties on our side far surpassing the death toll of any skirmish we have been in since WW2.
Lets hope not, as divided as the Chinese have helped our country to become with their propaganda so happily accepted and promoted by the Democratic party. One has to conclude the DNC and China are in bed together for the purpose of destroying our nation. :furious:

I hate the Democrat party for this union with China, and Biden accepting their bribes.

Biden should be rallying our allies in the Pacific. If we all stand united against China, there would be no war. But just watch as our sold out to the Chinese President worthless Joe Biden, does nothing to hinder China at all. Of course we all have to wonder how much $$$$$ the Biden criminal family will pocket from China to look the other way and abandon our allies. :furious:
 
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