{
  "p": "ons",
  "op": "post",
  "title": "Did the New York Times stifle lab leak debate?",
  "url": "https://unherd.com/2021/08/did-the-new-york-times-stifle-lab-leak-debate/",
  "author": "Ashley Rindsberg (@AshleyRindsberg)",
  "body": "#### Were commercial relationships with China a factor?\n##### BY  [ASHLEY RINDSBERG](https://unherd.com/author/ashley-rindsberg/ \"Posts by Ashley Rindsberg\")\n\nThe world’s verdict on the lab leak seems to be shifting. The Biden Administration now thinks there is a credible possibility that Covid-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. WHO chief Tedros Adhanome Ghebreyesus has admitted that attempts to dismiss the hypothesis were “premature”. These are, of course, positive developments — but they should also leave us astounded.\n\nIn the opening months of the pandemic, the lab leak hypothesis was actively discredited by the media and scientific establishment, with anyone associated with it smeared as “[racist](https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-health-reporter-wuhan-lab-leak-coronavirus-theory-has-racist-roots-isnt-plausible)”. The question we have to ask now is how, and why, did this happen?\n\nTo a great extent, I believe the answer lies with the world’s most powerful news outlet, the  _New York Times._ At the start of the pandemic, the  _Times_  set the news and policy agenda on the lab leak hypothesis, discrediting it and anyone who explored it. The  _Times_  did so while taking money from Chinese state-owned propaganda outlets, such as  _China Daily_, and while pursuing long-term investments in China that may have made the paper susceptible to the CCP’s strong-arm propaganda tactics in the first months of the pandemic.\n\nAs someone who has spent years researching the history of the  _Times_, I was struck by the paper’s markedly pro-China bent at the start of the pandemic. It  [opposed Trump’s travel ban](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/opinion/sunday/corona-virus-usa.html?searchResultPosition=4)  to and from China as “isolationist”. It  [all but ignored](https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2021/05/11/2003757183)  the unparalleled success of China’s arch-enemy, Taiwan, in containing the virus. It downplayed China’s economic war against Australia, whose prime minister early on questioned the CCP story on the pandemic’s origins. And it  [celebrated](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/23/world/asia/china-coronavirus-normal-life.html)  China’s success in battling Covid-19, taking the CCP’s absurd mortality numbers at face value, reporting in August 2020 that 4,634 Chinese people died from the virus and, [six months later](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/02/13/world/covid-19-coronavirus), that there were 4,636 total deaths. That in a country of 1.4 billion people only  _two_  people died of Covid-19 in the half a year defies logic and common sense. Still, the  _Times_  legitimised the CCP numbers by printing them as hard fact.\n\nOf course, over the past year newspapers across the world have fallen for the CCP’s distorted Covid-19 narrative. And there is no evidence to suggest that the CCP did put pressure on the  _Times_. But when it came to the lab leak debate, the  _Times_  was relentless. Starting in early 2020, when little was known about the virus — and nothing about its origins — the  _Times_  adopted a stridently anti-lab leak stance. In its first report on the topic, a  [February 17, 2020 article](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronavirus-tom-cotton-china.html) covering comments made by Sen. Tom Cotton, the  _Times_  stigmatised lab leak as a “fringe theory”. Once the story was published, its reporter took to Twitter to  [describe](https://twitter.com/jotted/status/1229391896532774912)  it as “the kind of conspiracy once reserved for the tinfoil hatters”.\n\nOnly one week prior, another outlet made strikingly similar claims. In an editorial, the CCP-owned  _China Daily_  [thundered](https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202002/10/WS5e413579a31012821727668c.html)  that Cotton’s decision to spread “malicious rumors” shows “how irresponsible some are in their haste to attack China”. The  _Times,_  echoing  _China Daily_, also cast the lab leak hypothesis as a “rumor”.\n\nOver the months, the  _Times’s_ coverage grew even more strident — and more in line with Chinese propaganda. In February 2020, it gave a platform to zoologist Peter Daszak, publishing an  [opinion piece](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/opinion/coronavirus-pandemics.html)  by him which claimed that the pandemic was caused by “road-building, deforestation, land clearing and agricultural development”. Daszak argued that “discovering and sequencing” viruses like Covid-19 in labs like the one in Wuhan should be a priority.\n\nThe  _Times,_ which used Daszak as a key source in over a dozen articles_,_ _has_ never mentioned that Daszak’s organisation  [funded the Wuhan lab](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9129749/How-Peter-Daszak-WHOs-team-investigating-original-source-outbreak.html), in particular research into bats and coronaviruses, a flagrant conflict of interest. Crucially, there was no mention of this when a reporter interviewed Daszak  [this February](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/14/health/WHO-covid-daszak-china-virus.html), following his return from a heavily criticised WHO investigation into the virus’s origins. (Danszak later  [recused](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/uk-scientist-centre-pandemic-origins-debate-removed-inquiry/)  himself from the investigation because of the conflict of interest.)\n\nBut the  _Times_  also never revealed that Daszak was a favoured source for another outlet:  _China Daily_. The state-owned media organisation, along with Xinhua and sister outlet  _Global Times_,  [repeatedly](https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202102/16/WS602b5d2ca31024ad0baa9123.html)  quoted Daszak to assure readers of China’s full cooperation in the search for the virus’s origins — and  [to discredit the possibility of a lab leak](http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/northamerica/2021-06/02/c_139985117.htm).\n\nIn fact, the  _Times_  appears to have been so enthusiastic in its attempts to discredit the lab leak hypothesis that Chinese propaganda outlets promoted its reporting on social media. In April 2020, for instance, the _Times_ published  [an article claiming](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/30/us/politics/trump-administration-intelligence-coronavirus-china.html)  the Trump Administration’s investigation into a lab leak “has echoes of the Bush administration’s 2002 push for assessments saying that Iraq had weapons of mass of destruction.” Within minutes, a  _China Daily_  columnist retweeted the  [story](https://twitter.com/chenweihua/status/1255830220717817857)  and  [parroted its central claim](https://twitter.com/chenweihua/status/1255820693226377216).\n\n\nBut why would the  _Times_  stake its credibility on a position that had no evidence behind it, and one that, as we are now discovering, looks increasingly unlikely? Was it simply a knee-jerk response by a liberal outlet to President Trump’s endorsement of the lab leak hypothesis at the time? Perhaps — but I suspect the answer is more complicated than that. Researching and writing  [my new book](https://www.amazon.com/Gray-Lady-Winked-Misreporting-Fabrications/dp/1736703315), I discovered that the  _Times_ has a dark history of inadvertently helping authoritarian regimes with its reporting, including  [the Nazis, the Soviet Union and Fidel Castro](https://nypost.com/2021/05/08/how-the-new-york-times-publishes-lies-to-serve-a-biased-narrative/).\n\nIn the case of China, this appears true to an alarming degree. For over a decade, the  _Times_  has nurtured a special relationship with the CCP — though we can only speculate as to whether this influenced its editorial output. Still, the  _Times_  certainly appeared unconcerned about the appearance of impropriety as it took millions of dollars from Chinese propaganda outlets, most prominently _China Daily_. In exchange for this  badly needed revenue, the  _Times_  has published hundreds of “advertorials” written by Chinese propaganda outlets, including  _China Daily_, which promote CCP messaging on the most serious topics, such as a double-page spread on the hotly contested Diaoyu Islands brazenly titled: “[Diaoyu Islands Belong to China](https://www.voanews.com/east-asia/china-claims-islands-ny-times-ad)”.\n\nBut the paper’s advertising relationship with Chinese state outlets is only the visible part of the iceberg. In 2012, seeking to capitalise on China’s burgeoning middle and upper classes, the  _Times_  launched a Chinese edition of its daily paper followed by the launch of a luxury lifestyle magazine. “The appetite for _New York Times_ journalism in Chinese has never been stronger,”  [a company press release](https://www.nytco.com/press/new-york-times-chinese-magazine/) stated at the time.\n\nIn investing so heavily in China, the  _Times_  unintentionally handed the rapacious CCP an editorial lever to sway coverage. The  _Times_  [learned this first-hand](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/31/insider/the-new-york-times-vs-the-great-firewall-of-china.html)  when, in 2012, the CCP blocked Chinese access to the  _Times_ online in retaliation for an unfavourable article on the family finances of China’s outgoing premier, Wen Jiabao. The  _Times_  set out on a year-long “lobbying” effort to restore coverage that included meetings with Xinhua, the parent of  _China Daily_.\n\nToday, however, just as the tide is turning on the lab leak debate, so too is the  _Times_’s approach to the subject. Last summer, the  _Times_  abruptly ended its advertising relationship with Chinese state media outlets and  [scrubbed all trace of the advertorials](https://freebeacon.com/media/nyt-quietly-scrubs-chinese-propaganda/)  from its archive. And in recent months, it has  [published](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/health/covid-virus-origins.html?searchResultPosition=2)  a  [handful](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/health/wuhan-coronavirus-lab-leak.html)  of  [articles](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-lab.html)  quoting scientists who believe we should take seriously the prospect of a lab leak.\n\nBut does this excuse the paper’s behaviour at the start of the pandemic?\n\nOf course, the _New York Times_, like so many industry-leading corporations, should be expected to make mistakes. But unlike other big businesses, this one is entrusted with shaping our reality — especially on murky issues as critical as the origins of a pandemic that claimed four million lives. Only time will tell whether the lab leak hypothesis is true or false. But whatever the result, what a tragedy it would be if the  _Times_’s coverage delayed that verdict."
}