For months now, the headlines have shown that Americans’ trust in the national media is dying and not likely coming back.
But you have to hand it to the liberals who run the country’s news media industry. Last month they trotted out a poll that showed you, news consumers, are the problem, not them. According to the American Press Institute’s analysis of its own poll, “Not all Americans universally embrace many of the core values that guide journalistic inquiry.”
To get why that is, consider reports on Tuesday by the folks at The Federalist and Twitchy, both conservative websites.
In recent days, the idea that the COVID-19 virus was generated in, and escaped from, a lab in Wuhan has gotten more traction than at any other point in the pandemic. Even the eminent Dr. Anthony Fauci, who openly ridiculed the notion a year ago, said recently he’s “not convinced” the virus was naturally occurring in bats and called for further investigation.
Maggie Haberman, part of the anti-Trump brigades at The New York Times, was on CNN on Tuesday and when asked about the sudden acceleration of the born-in-a-lab theory, identified the real culprits: former President Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
“Look, I do think it’s important to remember that part of the issue back when this was first being reported on and discussed back … when the pandemic had begun, then-President Trump and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, both suggested they had seen evidence this was formed in a lab, and they also suggested it was not released on purpose, but they refused to release the evidence showing what it was,” Haberman said while on CNN.
“And so because of that, that made this instantly political. It was example 1000 when the Trump administration learned, when you burn your own credibility over and over again, people are not going to believe you, especially in an election year,” she added.
The public should immediately and wholly dismiss any NYT reporter who discusses burned credibility.
Forget the fact that the Times and other major media called Trump a liar nearly every day for five years, largely over differences of opinion. Take just two Times examples compiled last month by former CBS News reporter Sheryl Atkisson, who has kept a running list of media malfeasance in the Trump era.
Atkisson noted that the U.S. intelligence community blew up the NYT bombshell from last year that the Russians were paying the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, saying it had “low to moderate” confidence that actually happened. Atkisson also dredged up a Times goodie from April 2020, when the paper predicted we wouldn’t have a COVID vaccine until November 2033.
Speaking of the virus, we return to Haberman.
Both The Federalist and Twitchy posted screenshots of tweets by the national media belittling those who floated the idea of a lab leak early on, such as GOP Sen. Tom Cotton, who discussed it in March 2020.
According to those screenshots, Cotton was spreading “misinformation.”
In another one, The Washington Post’s renowned “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler said last May that Republican Sen. Ted Cruz missed the info that it was “virtually impossible for this virus to jump from the lab.” “We deal in facts,” Kessler added. The Post for a few weeks now has been running regular news and opinion pieces about why the Wuhan lab should be investigated.
Republican Sen. Mike Braun tweeted on Tuesday that Trump’s claim, made in April 2020, that intelligence, as Haberman suggested, showed it emerged from a lab was met with accusations that he was spreading a “fringe conspiracy theory.”
Speaking of Cotton, freelance writer Drew Holden tweeted NYT articles from last year that accused Cotton of offering up a “fringe theory,” and an “unsubstantiated rumor,” that the lab suggestion had been “dismissed” by supposedly real scientists.
Holden then added two more from the Times in which the paper noted Trump had pushed intel officials to find evidence of a lab leak, but that was an “unproven” or “unsubstantiated” theory and an “unfounded conspiracy.”
Gleen Greenwald of The Intercept tweeted on Monday that the liberal website Vox had that day made “big substantive changes” to a March 2020 article that supposedly “debunked” the lab “conspiracy.”
The point is that journalists like Haberman were so blinded by their years-long and unrelenting hatred of Trump that they immediately dismissed everything the president said, even when it hurt the country.
Her CNN host should have asked Haberman even if Trump had released the intelligence would you have believed it, or, as we all lived through, would you have spent months of accusing him of being a racist who was whipping up anti-Chinese sentiment?
The American Press Institute has it backward. It’s journalists who don’t share Americans’ values, not the other way around.
Support journalism by clicking here to our gofundme or sign up for our free newsletter by clicking here
Android Users, Click Here To Download The Free Press App And Never Miss A Story. It’s Free And Coming To Apple Users Soon.