XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT! Exclusive: New York Times quashed COVID origins inquiry.

Reports on gain-of-function research into coronaviruses were already in the public domain in early 2020. So were reports of lab leaks, in the US and abroad. Instead of doing what journalists are supposed to do — ask questions — the Times led the charge in stigmatizing debate about COVID-19’s origins as a ‘fringe theory’. Alexandra Stevenson, the Times’s Hong Kong reporter, called it ‘the kind of conspiracy once reserved for tinfoil hatters’.

Not any more. So, did the Times distance itself form the lab-leak story because its management hated Donald Trump? Or was its notion of the national interest influenced by its business interests in China?

Just think of the media as Democratic Party operatives with bylines, and it all makes sense.

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