You gotta remember they had time to "debunk" this theory. So apparently they had time to do something, except critical thinking.
This is in fact how the media has always behaved. It did this about more or less every major event in US history. Only when the tide has turned sufficiently within the culture as a whole does the media as a whole manage to embrace non-status-quo positions. There are always outliers, visible/audible from the start, who tell contrary stories, just as there have been for COVID19.
> "After the interview aired, death threats flooded his inbox. The vitriol came not just from strangers who thought he was being racially insensitive but also from prominent scientists, some of whom used to be his friends. One said he should just “wither and die.”"