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.
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Very well said indeed. I, for one, am very, very grateful that you have supplied the detailed information to pretty much confirm much of what Professor Nicholls told us from China, 06 Feb 20: SARS-CoV-2 is another endemic common cold coronavirus.
So true. Even back in 2020, the virus was for the vast majority of people, just a little pest.
No doubt your invitations to appear on the BBC are in the post.
Thank you for all your courage and hard work over the last three years, It’s been bad enough for the likes of me but it must be utterly frustrating if not soul destroying for you to see your hard work and expertise being traduced by a whinging old harpy.
Keep going, there are far more of us than they would have you believe – and never forget that we have right on our side.
No doubt we have right on our side.
Unfortunately the bogus “science” and enthusiastic tyranny team have both power and apparently unlimited wealth on theirs.
And the mass in the middle are more interested in watching the Footie and Bellenders.
Heartily seconded 👌
I wish you the greatest of luck in receiving a coherent, rational reply from this bunch of rock chucking knuckle draggers!
Bullies always punch the ones who don’t punch back! But if they do, the bullies just turn away shocked and completely ignore them from then on, then to the next passive target!
Those knuckle-dragging troglodytes are indeed an irrational bunch of cowards.
Excellent rebuttal, but I just don’t understand why you are not taking any medical advice from a Professor in Sociology :-).
The legacy media are thrashing around in their death throes, cruelly being kept alive because of their usefulness to the establishment. Staffed by low-grade, lazy presstitutes, copying and pasting the latest news agency propaganda, and delusional, knowledge-lite hacktivists, angrily screaming about the current thing. It’s only their own sense of self-importance that keeps them going.
Ridiculous and pathetic in equal measure. Real journalism has moved on, along with most people’s attention.
The good journalists make more money on Substack anyway.
If proof were ever needed of how utterly biased and bent Wikipedia is, take a browse through the brief notes on the inestimable Professor Carl Heneghan, who along with Mike Yeadon is responsible for this 74 year old and his family refusing the mRNA stabs.
Half the write up on CH is given over to criticism by Sonia Sodah, a PPE graduate and part-time scribbler for the Grauniad and her opinion of where the supremely well qualified Prof Heneghan got it wrong on the Danmask study.
The word ‘chutzpah’ was clearly invented for this woman.
@ Dr Carl Heneghan
I don’t know if you are aware of Stephen Petty as he that could be a useful ally. He gave evidence at a Senate hearing on the effectiveness of masks. He speaks from experience as his he is a certified industrial hygienist. As he pointed out that the knowledge around hygiene controls, which includes masks, has been around for 80 years.
Here is the Senate hearing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3dnkbKoj4A&t=35s
There’s not science, just indoctrination
The Indoctrinators, Part 2: Klaus Schwab
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-indoctrinators-part-2-klaus-schwab/
Karen Harradine
*******************************************************
Stand in the Park Make friends & keep sane
Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am
Elms Field
near play area
Wokingham RG40 2FE
thank you for doing this i despise the masks more than anything. ny times bought and paid for gates etc , for years
Strangely enough, this is the latest email information I’ve received today from govuk re effectiveness of n95 masks in community settings.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-effectiveness-of-n95-masks-in-community-settings
‘The purpose of this rapid review was to identify and assess the available evidence for the effectiveness of N95 and equivalent face masks as wearer protection against coronavirus (COVID-19) when used in the community by people at higher risk of becoming seriously ill from COVID-19 (search date: up to 26 September 2022).’
The conclusion?
No studies matching the inclusion criteria were found, so no evidence could be presented.
Published 12 April 2023
🤔🙄
Many congratulations once again gentlemen for your excellent work. The fact that the NYT are using a totally unqualified and hypocritical contributor to try and rubbish your excellent work proves that you are winning. All cults only have one response to attacks on their beliefs, to dig their holes deeper and deeper by making ever more hysterical ad hominem attacks. The sides of their holes will eventually collapse. Remember “If all else fails, try honesty”.
Zeynep can go Tufecki herself. The Cochrane review remains the gold standard and stands up to scrutiny, and thus remains the final word on the matter.