Jonathan Turley: COVID Lab Leak Is a Scandal of Media and Government Censorship
The Wall Street Journal According to reports, Energy Department has concluded that Pandemic COVID Most likely, it was caused by a laboratory leak.
This conclusion is believed to be based upon a classified intelligence report that was recently sent to the White House, and other key members of Congress. Many will investigate why the scientific evidence for a lab leak came so slowly from intelligence agencies.
For me, however, the most alarming aspect of censorship was not the science.
Although there will always be some debate regarding the origins COVID-19, there will soon be an acknowledgment. Actual debate.
The media and the government have teamed up for years to treat anyone who raises a laboratory theory as one of three possible options: conspiracy theorist, racist or racist conspiracy theorist.
These academics also joined the chorus of those who ridicule the theory. One study The theory was cited as an example “anti-Chinese racism” “toxic white masculinity.”
Even as late as May 2021Apoorva Mandavilli, Science and Health reporter at the New York Times, called any mention of the laboratory theory “apoorva” “racist.”
She is the new model “advocacy journalism” at the Times. Reporters who held on to outdated views of objective journalism were expelled from the Times ranks long ago.
Mandavilli, along with others, made it clear that the reporters who covered the theory were COVID’s Bull Connors. She wrote wistfully “someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.”
Nicholas Wade (ex-science editor for the New York Times), is however, an ex-New York Times science editor. His former colleagues were chastised for ignoring the obvious evidence supporting a lab theory as well as Chinese efforts to arrest scientists and destroy evidence that could establish the origin.
Others from academia joined the chorus to assure the public there was no scientific basis to their theory. This left only racism and politics as the motives behind it. In early 2020, with little available evidence, two op-eds in The Lancet In February and Nature Medicine The denial was all-consuming.
According to Lancet Op-Ed, “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.”
It was also important to not forget about large payments by the Chinese government for American universities, and grants from some of these authors to both Chinese interests, or the specific. Wuhan lab.
It was not acceptable to make any reference to the laboratory theory. When Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) He had only mentioned it in 2020 to the Senate, but was slapped by the usual flash mob of media. The Washington Post ridiculed him for repeating a “Debunked coronavirus “conspiracy theory.”
Dr. LiMeng Yan, a virologist, was a former postdoctoral fellow of the University of Hong Kong. “I can present solid scientific evidence … [that] it is a man-made virus created in the lab.” The left-leaning PolitiFact slammed her She gave her a “pants on fire rating.”
Biden accused Trump, President Donald Trump, of promoting racism through his criticism of China’s government in relation to the pandemic and his administration reportedly shut down the State Department investigation into the possible lab origins of the virus.
When Biden later revived an investigation into the origins, he was denounced as “sugar-coating Trump’s racism.”
The categorical rejection of the lab theory is only the latest media narrative proven to be false. The Russian collusion scandal, the Hunter Biden “Russian disinformation,” the Lafayette Park “photo op” conspiracy, the Nick Sandmann controversy, the Jussie Smollett case, the migrant whipping scandal.
On the lab theory, media like the Washington Post piled on senators like Cotton and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for mentioning the lab theory, only later to admit that it could be legitimate.
All of those experts and writers who were called racists or suspended by social media were simply forgotten in media coverage.
That is why this is really about censorship.
The media guaranteed that we did not have a full debate over the origins of the virus and attacked those who had the temerity to state the obvious that there was a plausible basis for suspecting the Wuhan lab.
None of this has diminished demands for more censorship. Even after Twitter admitted that it wrongly blocked the New York Post story before the 2020 election, Democratic senators responded by warning the company not to cut back on censorship and even demanded more censorship.
Recently, the “Twitter files” revealed an extensive and secret FBI effort to censor citizens on social media.
This included undisclosed efforts by members like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to get Twitter to ban a columnist and target critics. In a House hearing, Democratic leaders like Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md). called for more censorship and opposed investigations into the censorship efforts.
These same figures in politics and media are just moving on to the next approved narrative.
Biden previously called for more censorship and accused Big Tech of “killing people” by not censoring more views deemed “COVID misinformation.”
The opposite is true. By suppressing alternative scientific and policy views, the public was denied a full debate over mask efficacy, vaccine side effects, COVID origins and other important issues. Many of those questions are only now being recognized as legitimate and worthy of debate.
Censorship does not, as Biden claims, save lives.
It is more likely to cost lives by protecting approved views from challenge. It does not foster the truth any more than it fosters free speech. Whatever the origin of COVID-19 may be in China, the origin of our censorship scandal is closer to home.
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and a professor at George Washington University Law School.
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