zlacker

>>pseudo+(OP)
Current bottom line:

- 1st response to CoVID occurrence was certainly in Wuhan.

- The closest wild strain of CoVID happens in bats living thousand kilometres from Wuhan

- Wuhan had two institutes which, on record, did gain of function experiments on bat coronaviruses

- Beijing purposefully destroyed DNA evidence, and obliterated the team who first sequenced the CoVID genome

- Chinese authorities were scrambling, and suppressing reporting as early as November, seemingly with a very good idea what they are up to.

>>baybal+5u
This story continues to evolve and it's exciting to watch the new reporting come to light and slowly flesh out the details. The "lab escape hypothesis" was disregarded by many (if not most) media outlets as a conspiracy theory early on.

This feels so much like the Iraq "weapons of mass destruction" fiasco. Any time news outlets are credulously repeating the words of "government officials," you need to seriously devalue the reporting. Reporting isn't just being a mouthpiece for the state, and these outlets fail us when they express such a high degree of certainty before there's any independent verification of the facts.

Of course, everything you describe is still "circumstantial," and it's wise to remain skeptical. However, even if we somehow eventually confirm this was not a lab escape, there's absolutely no excuse for the certainty expressed by the NYT et al in their early reporting (which is true for so much of the other COVID-19 media coverage - the media did a terrible job of expressing uncertainty with very incomplete information throughout the entire affair).

>>Jeremy+K81
> Of course, everything you describe is still "circumstantial," and it's wise to remain skeptical. However, even if we somehow eventually confirm this was not a lab escape, there's absolutely no excuse for the certainty expressed by the NYT et al in their early reporting (which is true for so much of the other COVID-19 media coverage - the media did a terrible job of expressing uncertainty with very incomplete information throughout the entire affair).

In general, my trust for the media has fallen through the floor in the last decade. I used to think that the media was mostly trustworthy, but that they would cater to the establishment on certain issues (e.g., WMDs and the general Iraq/Afghanistan war effort) but apart from those obvious high-profile issues they were mostly trustworthy. Now I can't tell if I was wrong the whole time and I've just wisened up recently or if the quality of the media has plummeted (especially with respect to ideological issues) or both. I strongly suspect that the media has become considerably more ideological (abandoning aspirations for neutrality and objectivity in favor of activism and proselytizing, at least to a degree), but I've probably (and hopefully) wisened up a bit as well.

>>throwa+Xl1
Noam Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” should be on your bookshelf. Goes into great detail especially regarding the need that media has to toeing the government line. It keeps them relevant and included in general news at all. Telling the truth or at least failing to omit it could equate to biting the hand that feeds you other stories.

>>alanwr+ug2
I should probably read it sometime, but I don't think "toeing the government line" aptly characterizes the media from 2016-2020. On the contrary, the media has had little except harsh criticism for the government in this time frame (which isn't to say that some or all of the criticism is undeserved, only that it seems to contradict the notion that the media toes the government line).

>>throwa+vh2
Haven't read it since the 90's but the "toeing the line" bit sounds like the criticism that the media are uncritically dependent on official sources. A reporter's dependence on a particular official as a source of information and the resultant reluctance to alienate such a source was proposed to explain why media outlets have the effect of uncritically promulgating government policy or propaganda.

I don't think this situation has changed in essence. Media outlets may now filter first on party affiliation, but they haven't replaced their dependence on official sources with better independent investigative reporting, for instance.

> On the contrary, the media has had little except harsh criticism for the government in this time frame

Or glowing, fawning reverence. It depends on the media outlet and the official (really the official's party) in question. The screw turned for Cuomo, but I imagine for every Cuomo, there are more darlings that go unchallenged.