Mainstream media echoing Chinese talking points on coronavirus crisis?
Steven Mosher, author of 'Bully of Asia,' explains why Americans shouldn't trust China on COVID-19 cases.
Steven Mosher, author of "Bully of Asia," joined "The Ingraham Angle" Tuesday to discuss China's alleged coronavirus disinformation campaign and the numbers they are providing of cases and deaths.
"I don't know why anyone takes China's epidemic numbers seriously. The Chinese authorities have lied from the beginning of this outbreak. They don't just fudge the numbers. They make them up out of whole cloth," Mosher said. "You know, in Wuhan they tell us that from the beginning to the end of the epidemic in Wuhan, it's not over yet by the way, that 2,535 died. Well, I think the number is more like 50,000. And let me tell you how I get that number. I get that number because the crematory ovens were going for 60 days and we estimate they were disposing of about a thousand corpses a day. That's 60 thousand people."
"And then on March 23rd, after the 60-day crematoria frenzy, they began handing out funeral urns," Mosher added. "Five hundred funeral urns a day to grieving relatives from seven crematoria at times 14 days. Again, that's about fifty thousand."
Host Laura Ingraham was critical of some members of the media for promoting China's latest numbers.
NBC News faced a wave of accusations that it was doing the Chinese government's bidding by tweeting on Tuesday that it had not reported coronavirus deaths while the U.S. saw more than 1,000 overnight.
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Mosher called the push by China to change the narrative a "massive effort."
"This is a massive effort on the part of China. It's not just a few Twitter accounts. It's thousands and thousands," Mosher said, noting that the media failed to pick up any negative China stories. "And yet every Chinese embassy, every Chinese media outlet, including Hong Kong Phenix Television, which was in the press conference yesterday with President Trump, they're all touting the Chinese, the great Chinese success in controlling the coronavirus epidemic when they haven't controlled it at all. And they spread it around the world."
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