Reporters Admit Dismissing Wuhan Lab Leak Theory

Journalists continued to acknowledge Sunday that the media's longstanding dismissal of the Wuhan "lab-leak" theory was in part due to Republicans pitching it, reports FOX News.

Once widely cast aside as a racist "conspiracy theory" and "fringe" nonsense, the possibility that the coronavirus accidentally leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology has gained increasing credence in recent weeks. The saga has led to yet another reckoning for mainstream media journalists about groupthink and bias in the industry. Faced with criticism that they blasted the theory last year for political reasons, some reporters have admitted its Republican origins with figures like Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., former President Donald Trump, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo played into why they disparaged it.

ABC News Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl suggested on ABC's "This Week" Sunday that figures like Trump and Pompeo were not taken seriously by members of the media, saying "now serious people are saying it needs a serious inquiry."

"Yes, I think a lot of people have egg on their face," Karl said. "This was an idea that was first put forward by Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, Donald Trump, and look some things may be true even if Donald Trump said them. Because Trump was saying so much else, that was just out of control, and because he was, you know, making a frankly racist appeal talking about Kung Flu, and the China virus, he said flatly this came from that lab, and it was widely dismissed ... but now serious people are saying it needs a serious inquiry."

“Some things may be true even if Donald Trump said them” – ABC’s @JonKarl re origin of COVID-19 pandemic. #ThisWeek pic.twitter.com/voC1ISBv4X

— Brent Baker (@BrentHBaker) May 30, 2021

New York Times reporter David Leonhardt also conceded Sunday many journalists dismissed the lab-leak theory solely because Cotton, a Trump ally and longtime critic of China, proposed it.

NBC's Chuck Todd addressed the issue on "Meet The Press" Sunday, saying that "for many," the lab leak theory got "tangled up in politics" and was conflated with one theory that the Chinese released the virus deliberately.

While interviewing former Trump Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, Todd repeatedly suggested anti-China rhetoric was to blame for media dismissals of the virus.

"Did in some ways, the sort of irrational attacks on China, did that slow down efforts of the intelligence community to actually do some fact-finding?" Todd asked.

"Well, look, I think what slowed down efforts more than anything else were the early statements that were published by a few scientists dismissing the idea that it could have come out of a lab," Pottinger said. "And in fact, caricaturing people who thought that it might have come out of a lab."