The CIA revealed on Jan. 25 that the agency believed Covid-19 began in a laboratory, bringing it into alignment with the position held by the FBI and other federal agencies. The media widely reported the development without recounting the number of times that their reporters deemed Covid-19’s man-made origin a “conspiracy.”
Many of the reporters singled out Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton (R), who became vocal in warning about the spread of Covid-19 weeks before the first reported cases in the United States.
“Senator Tom Cotton repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins,” Shanghai Bureau Chief Alexandra Stevenson wrote in a Feb. 17, 2020 story for The New York Times.
“Republican who floated virus conspiracy says ‘common sense has been my guide,'” The Guardian said in an April 11, 2020 headline on a story authored by Martin Pengelly.
“The Wuhan Lab Leak Hypothesis is a Conspiracy Theory, Not Science,” Ethan Siegel wrote in a June 7, 2021 story for Forbes — more than a year after the outbreak.
“Sorry, conspiracy theorists. Study concludes Covid-19 ‘is not a laboratory construct,'” Kate Holland announced in a March 27, 2020 story for ABC News.
“Lab leak Covid-19 theory is like something out of a comic book,” CNN’s Maggie Fox wrote in a March 31, 2021 story that cited Tulane University’s Dr. Robert Garry.
“Myth: The virus was man-made,” Amanda Seitz and Beatrice Dupuy insisted in a Dec. 17, 2020 fact-check for the Associated Press. “It was not.”
“Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked,” Washington Post Weather Editor Paulina Firozi wrote in a Feb. 17, 2020 story for her publication.
To date, The Washington Post has been the sole publication to issue a correction. “Earlier versions of this story and its headline inaccurately characterized comments by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) regarding the origins of the coronavirus,” the paper explained in an undated editor’s note. It said the terms “debunked” and “conspiracy theory” were removed from the text of the story “because, then as now, there was no determination about the origins of the virus.”
Related: CIA Acknowledges that Scientists Probably Created Covid-19
The World Health Organization said in a February 2021 report conducted with Beijing that it was “extremely unlikely” the virus developed in a laboratory, suggesting that it may have instead come from frozen food.
President Donald Trump revoked U.S participation in the WHO on Jan. 20, hours after taking office, with an executive order that cited, in part, its “mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises.”
Cotton addressed the news in a statement on social media on Saturday, writing on X, “It was never a conspiracy theory.”
He added in a separate comment, “I’ve said from the beginning that Covid likely originated in the Wuhan labs. Communist China covered it up and the liberal media covered for them. … Now, the most important thing is to make China pay for unleashing a plague on the world.”