Fact-checkers at outlets like the Washington Post and PolitiFact eagerly dismissed the COVID lab leak theory in 2020, and some were forced to issue updates and corrections.
The fact-checking industry helped mislead Americans by confidently dismissing thein 2020, as several prominent outlets have since been forced to issue embarrassing corrections.
"This fact-check has been revised based on updated reporting since it was first published in March 2020. The rating on the claim has been changed to Partly False to reflect that reporting," USA Today put at the top of the report in February 2021. Snopes determined that the two infectious disease labs located in proximity to the Huanan seafood market where some claimed COVID originated from are"the only factual elements to the ‘created-in-a-lab’ theory that are undisputed" but remained"speculative or rooted in false scientific claims."
There has been growing suspicion that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the COVID pandemic, something once considered a"conspiracy theory" by the liberal media. A separate CNN headline from April 2020 reading"Nearly 30% in the US believe a coronavirus theory that’s almost certainly not true" was based on a Pew Research poll taken at the time.
In May 2021, PolitiFact issued an embarrassing editor’s note:"When this fact-check was first published in September 2020, PolitiFact’s sources included researchers who asserted the SARS-CoV-2 virus could not have been manipulated. That assertion is now more widely disputed. For that reason, we are removing this fact-check from our database pending a more thorough review. Currently, we consider the claim to be unsupported by evidence and in dispute.
The video highlighted the two labs being geographically close to the wet market in question at the time and the various longstanding safety concerns the facilities had going before the pandemic. But the Post's fact-checking team seemed to give the Chinese scientists and government officials the benefit of the doubt when reporting they"adamantly denied" that COVID could have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
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