By A. G. Hamilton
Friday, April 03, 2020
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 National
Review Online’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 media and prominent
commentators accused Cotton of being irresponsible and spreading dangerous
claims. In perhaps the most embarrassing display, CBS’s Face the Nation
had 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.
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