Media top headlines September 7
In media news today, Rachel Maddow and other liberal media figures get slammed for 'taking the bait' on false ivermectin overdose story, CNN gets blasted for an article that claims 'Whiteness' will be expanded to 'tan' in a more diverse America, and The New York Times gets mocked for a piece that appeared to defend Biden's Afghanistan exit
CNN anchor Jim Sciutto ignored recently released documents revealing U.S. funding of coronavirus research in a Tuesday interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The "New Day" anchor interviewed Fauci hours after The Intercept published a story revealing several hundred pages of research that detailed U.S. funding of viral studies in China. According to documents, the U.S. government spent $3.1 million through the American health organization EcoHealth Alliance to fund bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. In addition, almost $600,000 was used to find and alter bat coronaviruses to infect humans.
Sciutto, however, ignored the breaking story in favor of bashing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his COVID-19 response.
"The trouble is, as you know, politics still trump the science, right? You listen, for an instance, to the governor of Florida, one of the states, of course, that has banned mask mandates. The way he described vaccinations was really remarkable and, again, defies the science," Sciutto said.
"If he feels that vaccines are not important for people, that they’re just important for some people, that’s completely incorrect. Vaccination, Jim, has been the solution to every major public health issue," Fauci responded.
Sciutto and Fauci also spent the interview criticizing images of college football fans without masks packing stadiums, prolonging what they called an "outbreak mode."
"I don’t think it’s smart. I think when you’re dealing with, you know, outdoors is always better than indoors, but even when you have such a congregate setting of people close together, first you should be vaccinated. And when you do have congregate settings particularly indoors, you should be wearing a mask," Fauci said.
Fauci famously denied that the National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan in various spars with Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul. Paul later retweeted the story to remark how Fauci had "lied again," proving the senator "was right about his agency funding novel Coronavirus research at Wuhan."
The documents obtained by The Intercept also gave more credence to the on-going "lab leak" theory that alleged that COVID-19 originated from a Wuhan lab rather than nature.
"The documents raise additional questions about the theory that the pandemic may have begun in a lab accident, an idea that [EcoHealth Alliance President Peter] Daszak has aggressively dismissed," The Intercept wrote.
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Fauci previously denied the theory in 2020, and various media pundits and scientists also labelled the idea a "conspiracy theory." In June 2021, though, Fauci denied that any discussion of the lab leak theory was being "deliberately suppressed."
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