> On the media 'not taking it seriously' - because there was no evidence whatsoever outside of conjecture and it was being pushed heavily by misinfo merchants.
As far as I can tell, it makes two logical errors, 1) that absence of evidence is reason to not take an idea seriously, in a space of known unknowns, & 2) that a possibility can be discredited because dishonest people are pushing it.
On the former point: "evidence = likely" does not necessarily imply "no evidence = unlikely" as you seem to believe (if by evidence you mean like courtroom evidence; we use probabilistic reasoning in the absence of such "evidence" for any one explanation.) we have gathered 0 evidence for many (probably most) true things.
Finally, there's a lack of understanding of how power works in the US. If you could get censored for saying something that the US government knew for months, then yes, you were being silenced, the absence of literal NKVD notwithstanding.