In what might be the least surprising development to come from the mainstream media's grappling with the U.S. Department of Energy's conclusion that a lab leak is the most likely origin of COVID-19, it turns out CNN's staff and reporters were told to ignore the possibility in its coverage of the pandemic.
The order to not run down leads related to a lab leak in China came, according to fresh reporting from Fox News Digital, from the "FactsFirst™" network's then-President Jeff Zucker. His reasoning? It was a "Trump talking point." Of course.
Trump Derangement Syndrome was so prevalent at CNN that it apparently literally made them ignore news to avoid lending any credibility to the 45th president — even when he was on the right track and has since been vindicated for pointing to China and a lab leak as the point of origin for the pandemic.
The revelations came from "a well-placed CNN insider," according to Fox News Digital:
In the early months of the pandemic, then-CNN president Jeff Zucker would not allow his network to chase down the lab-leak story because he believed it was a "Trump talking point," according to a well-placed CNN insider.
"People are slowly waking up from the fog," the insider told Fox News Digital. "It is kind of crazy that we didn't chase it harder."
Throughout Zucker's tenure as CNN's chief, he pulled what was once widely seen as a straight-news organization to an anti-Trump operation. CNN bent over backwards to knock down what former President Trump and members of his administration said lending credibility to the lab-leak theory, as the White House was deemed a nemesis by the network.
Not only did CNN seemingly let political hatred blind its news judgment, it also led the network to reportedly intentionally mislead its viewers and readers (or what's left of them) into thinking that the possibility of a lab leak was disinformation or the result of what the network often claimed was President Trump's "racism" and "xenophobia."
But, as Townhall has reported since the beginning of the pandemic when Trump administration officials raised the possibility, a lab leak is the best conclusion because...that's where the facts lead. No thanks to the secrecy and interference of the Chinese Communist Party, the facts were more difficult to come by than they should have been. But a lab leak, while the federal bureaucracy and mainstream outlets have taken their sweet time recognizing it, didn't need to be and should not have been suppressed. Outlets like CNN apparently did anyway.
Not for nothing, this revelation comes as CNN's current staff launch a new wave of attacks against Fox News for being "more like an extension of the GOP than a credible news organization with a mission of informing viewers and allowing them to arrive at their own decisions," according to one its senior media reporter. Really, CNN? The network that reportedly refused to report what were newsworthy developments about an emerging international story that would change the globe...because it sounded like something the sitting president of the United States was saying? Perhaps CNN is not the best (read: is apparently the worst) messenger to be accusing other news outlets of not "informing viewers and allowing them to arrive at their own decisions."
We may never know the full extent of how and why government agencies, "experts," and others in the mainstream media chose to suppress what began as a viable hypothesis and has now been deemed the most likely origin of COVID by federal agencies, but there are some major mea culpas needed. Too bad we're unlikely to hear any introspective apologies.