Paul Thacker in the DisInformation Chronicle reports on an internal survey conducted by leading U.S. news outlet CNN that found the network’s COVID-19 coverage was the third leading cause of distrust in it behind liberal bias and “the Chris Cuomo situation”.
“The only people likely surprised that an internal CNN report found CNN’s pandemic coverage was awful are CNN reporters and their colleagues bitching on Twitter,” he remarks. “To anyone outside a newsroom, CNN’s pandemic failures have been apparent for years.”
New light was shone on these failures last week when the Atlantic revealed that CNN had banned all discussion of the lab leak theory of Covid origins on air, fearing that it was a “xenophobic gambit that endangered Asian Americans”.
Thacker reviews some of CNN’s worst Covid-era offences, and doesn’t pull his punches.
A year ago, I reported that CNN’s science writer Maggie Fox did a copy/paste of Pfizer’s press release announcing the results of their COVID-19 vaccine clinical trial. Maggie Fox isn’t a name familiar to most readers, but while she was reporting at CNN her haphazard article on Pfizer’s clinical trial influenced CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. In March of last year, Walensky admitted that CNN’s faulty reporting misled her to believe that Pfizer’s vaccine was going to fix all the problems with the pandemic.
Below, you can view passages of Pfizer’s press release next to Maggie Fox’s copy-paste CNN article.
But it wasn’t just vaccine reporting where Maggie Fox and CNN reporters failed. Journalists promoting the Atlantic story on Twitter aren’t bothering to note that the Atlantic reported that former CNN CEO Zucker silenced reporting that discussed a possible lab accident in Wuhan, China.
Licht emphasize that although he would show employees grace for certain missteps, he had no tolerance for efforts to chill reporting on controversial topics. He noted that Zucker, fearing the Covid ‘lab leak theory’ was a xenophobic gambit that endangered Asian Americans, had essentially banned discussion of the topic on the air.
How’s that for CNN journalism?
But even if the Atlantic hadn’t exposed CNN’s ban, the bias was obvious to anyone reading CNN news or following their science reporter Maggie Fox. Shortly after the pandemic began, CNN ran a misleading story denigrating the 30% of Americans who believed the virus could have come from a lab.
According to the fact checkers and virologists CNN contacted, average American’s view that a Wuhan accident could have started the pandemic was ‘misinformation’.
Months later, this narrative that fact checkers and virologists constructed out of thin air began falling apart.
In the fall of 2020, emails released under public information requests showed that scientists had orchestrated a public disinformation campaign to confuse Americans about dangerous virus research happening in Wuhan, China. These emails exposed Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance orchestrating an influential February 2020 statement in the Lancet, calling the idea of a lab leak a “conspiracy”.
While getting people to sign on to the Lancet essay, Daszak emailed that the statement should “not be identifiable as coming from any one organization or person” but rather to be seen as “simply a letter from leading scientists”.
Despite virologists getting their pants pulled down, Maggie Fox doubled down at CNN.
Like most science writers, Fox ignored virologists’ own emails and constructed her articles around quotes from virologists with undisclosed conflicts of interest. For example, Fox used Tulane University virologist Robert Garry as a cudgel to attack former CDC Director Robert Redfield, who had made statements that he was concerned the pandemic started from a lab accident.
But this article was full of holes. Redfield is an infectious disease expert with a top secret security clearance, who was basing his assessment from a review of the science, intelligence documents and consultations with intelligence experts. Meanwhile, Robert Garry was hiding what he really thought.
A year and a half later, Megyn Kelly confronted Robert Garry, in an interview about his own emails which showed he had been very concerned at the beginning of the pandemic that the virus might have come out of a lab. Kelly’s questions left Garry sputtering up responses, and should be required viewing for Maggie Fox and other science writers.
Nonetheless, Maggie Fox continued with a series of articles and tweets, repetitively pointing against a possible lab accident. Why? That’s what she and all the other science writers were doing. Science writers call up their sources and write, they don’t report.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
There is nothing remnotely racist about it when you understand that its genesis lies with the Yanks and this is beyond dispute.I suppose its mildly amusing at this late stage of the game that this was ever the case. Do you really believe that departments of the American government would never use outsourcing in order to circumvent law. If you believe that then you are a schmuck, one amongst many.
CNN are the mouthpiece of the globalist cartel, American branch.
It includes the Democrat Party, RINO Republicans, Big Tech, Bjg Pharma, Corporations, 3 letter agencies (DoJ, FBJ, CIA), Blackrock and the majority of the legislature.
They act together for power and will go to any lengths to keep hold of it. They’re presently busy trying to stop Trump from running as he’s committed to destroying their grip on America.
It exists in the UK too in the form of the Unaparty and across the West. Keep an eye for example on America’s interference in Israel’s Supreme Court situation, kr and ‘say one thing, do another’ Rishi.
Once you’ve internalised this fact, everything you see happening makes sense.
The Cartel can’t win an election so is happy to steal, subvert, criminalise and extort to get their way.
Even when that despicable, lying snake Sunak can’t win an election, they find a way of getting him in control. The fact that the Tory members were not allowed to vote for Sunak, but the Tory MP’s put him in place, just shows how pro-globalist and anti-democratic the majority of Tory MPs are. I can never vote Labour, but I will never vote Tory again
It is a losing battle given the deline in their ratings. Even a major event like a nuclear war,which seems to be on the agenda, wouldn’t change the way people view things. We really are that bankrupt in terms of the mianstream. In the months to come you will see every arm of government coming our way and its opposition. I don’t know if it will be quick enough but at least it is occurring, a dollar short and a day late.On these islands we have escaped by the skin of our teeth a few times. If you really want us to survive then you have to enter the realm of the spirit.
Those of us who aren’t maniacs need to put a top to all of this. This isn’t just a pssing about about situation. You should wake up to the seriousness of the situation.
You ha\ve much more to lose than I do and you will be very frightened when it comes about. Please take the current situation seriously. It requires a change of attitude and an awareness regardless of how much you hate the status quo.
Good. Not before time.
”Boris Johnson has resigned as an MP with immediate effect, triggering a by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.
The former Prime Minister said he was quitting his parliament “at least for now” because he was “bewildered and appalled” at the Privileges Committee’s investigation into him.
In a blistering statement on Friday evening Mr Johnson said he had received a letter from the committee, which is investigating whether he lied to MPs over Partygate, “making it clear, much to my amazement, that they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of Parliament”.
Mr Johnson said: “I have today written to my association in Uxbridge and South Ruislip to say that I am stepping down forthwith and triggering an immediate by-election,” he said.
“I am very sorry to leave my wonderful constituency. It has been a huge honour to serve them, both as mayor and MP.”
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-quits-as-mp-after-privileges-committee-finding-b1086861.html?itm_source=Internal&itm_channel=homepage_banner&itm_campaig
Peking Piffle?
Good riddance indeed!. And hopefully he and the rest can be brought to trial. The buck stopped with him. He could have opposed the lockdowns, even resigned rather than be part of this. He could at least have not had a vile person like that former health secretary in his government. Instead – and not for the first time (eg the tube ban on drinking)- he chose to collaborate and oppose freedom.
Yes, agreed. Alas, these people always land on their feet and appear to be untouchable therefore any kind of hopes that we’ll ever see justice and accountability is a mere pipe dream. He’s as guilty as sin though but Clown World now dictates the likes of me and you will get arrested and put through the mill for misgendering someone or standing up for our kids’ rights not to be groomed at school, or you could be like this guy. They’ve killed democracy but we can’t let them kill free speech also.
https://trendingpoliticsnews.com/sick-christian-american-arrested-for-reading-bible-at-pennsylvania-pride-event-mace/?utm_source=endwoke&utm_medium=twitter
Excellent piece about how the censorship net the world over is tightening;
”This censorship stuff is no longer an aberration, a mistake made in panic, a secret plot to violate settled norms, or something about which these people are embarrassed once caught. Censorship has become the main agenda of many governments in the world today. It is being codified by the European Union, promoted by NATO, and institutionalized in every regulatory bureaucracy.
And there is a feeling of panic in the air about all of this, almost as if these agencies and industries are freaking out about losing control and desperate to regain the monopoly that they believe they once had. They have every intention of ramping up the spying, putting more pressure on social media, and otherwise deploying every trick in the book for clamping down on those who would dare to disagree.
If government posited itself as one source of information among many, that would be one thing. We could take it with a grain of salt. But that is not what is happening. Governments around the world are positing themselves to gain the full monopoly on information and doing it through surreptitious means that fly in the face of the whole ethos of freedom itself, and with the ironic result of the triumph of misinformation and disinformation.
We must realize that these efforts can no longer be written off as weird aberrations. The push is organized, focused, intense, and involves security agencies at the highest levels. They have made their peace with the idea of hardcore censorship and will push it as far as it can go.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fda-pledges-stop-spread-misinformation
Bozo Johnson resigns with immediate effect.
He must have a new job at the WEF.
If the lab that covid is highly likely to have leaked from had been run by white men, rather than a Chinese woman being the principle figure, I bet CNN and all the other woke media would pretty quickly have been running stories about how it’s all the fault of systemic racism or outdated patriarchy. The fact that the “devil incarnate” himself (Trump) talked about the China virus and possible lab leaks presumably meant that in the eyes of most liberals it had to be false, whereas if Clinton had of been President and said the same thing it would be instantly taken as gospel. Their hypocrisy is nothing short of breath taking.
I believe the research that led to covid started in America and the gain of function aspect of that research was intended to make the resulting virus a weapon. I also think when the research appeared to be generating something too dangerous it was passed over to Wuhan to complete the work, financed indirectly by Fauci from the USA who was financed by the American military.