A CNN insider claimed the network’s former president Jeff Zucker ordered staffers to forego investigating the COVID origins lab leak theory, arguing the discussion would only serve as a “Trump talking point.”
“People are slowly waking up from the fog,” the insider told Fox News Digital. “It is kind of crazy that we didn’t chase it harder.”
Zucker’s disdain for anything related to former President Donald Trump drove the network into an anti-Trump operation from the moment he descended an escalator at Trump Tower and announced his bid for the White House nearly eight years ago. From that day forward, the network pushed countless false accusations, misapplied or misrepresented facts, and omitted pertinent information surrounding Trump’s only term in office.
When COVID began spreading across the globe three years ago, a concerted effort formed almost instantly from legacy media, public health officials, and Democrat Party politicians to suppress or dismiss the idea the virus possibly leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the central Chinese city.
Zucker and other CNN officials played a role in attempting to debunk such narratives about the pandemic.
Under Zucker’s watch, CNN’s Oliver Darcy published a story headlined, “Here’s how to debunk coronavirus misinformation and conspiracy theories from friends and family,” on March 28, 2020, which attempted to give the network’s sinking viewership advice on how to converse with family and friends who refused to believe the mainstream media’s take on COVID.
“While the coronavirus pandemic has isolated family and friends inside their homes, it has in many cases increased online or over-the-phone communication with loved ones,” Darcy wrote. “But, in some cases, relatives and friends share poor information – whether it is bad science related to how to prevent the virus, debunked rumors about cities being put on lockdown, or conspiracy theories about the origins of Covid-19.”
Darcy added the so-called misinformation related to a public health crisis poses a risk to those who fall victim to it — one of the many reports to come out of the network dismissing anything that goes against the mainstream narrative.
CNN host Fareed Zakaria said during a broadcast that “the far right has now found its own virus conspiracy theory” when discussing the lab leak.
Independent journalist Tom Elliott compiled a Twitter thread of receipts last week showcasing clips of legacy media pundits and reporters from CNN and other Left-wing outlets dismissing the lab leak as a “conspiracy theory.”
CNN’s @DrewGriffinCNN: “Zero proof” behind “conspiracy theory” that Covid originated not from nature but a Chinese bio lab pic.twitter.com/kpFQV8V37I
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 27, 2023
Zucker resigned from his post last year after an internal investigation into disgraced former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo revealed that the former network president had an ongoing consensual relationship — with top marketing officer Allison Gollust — at the media network that he had failed to disclose to the company.
CNN officials later replaced Zucker with Chris Licht, who almost immediately instituted changes at the cable outlet to restore trust in the network “by being an organization that exemplifies the best characteristics of journalism.”
The “well-known” CNN insider that accused Zucker of bypassing the controversial origins theory of COVID comes as the U.S. Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently stated the virus leaked from the Chinese laboratory in question.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Department of Energy officials revised a previous document that judged with “low confidence” that the virus had leaked from a Chinese laboratory.
New classified intelligence recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress showed Energy Department officials shifted their assessment of the pandemic’s origins in an updated 2021 report by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office. The updated classified report also affirms the view that COVID did not stem from a biological weapons program. The Journal noted that a lack of a definitive animal source had led researchers and U.S. officials to suspect a leak from Wuhan’s assemblage of laboratories.
FBI Director Christopher Wray also recently said the bureau assessed that the origins of COVID most likely leaked from a Wuhan lab.
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The National Intelligence Council and four agencies, which the Journal says officials refuse to identify, still believe with “low confidence” in the natural emergence theory. The Central Intelligence Agency and two other agencies reportedly still have not made a determination.
Subcommittee members from the U.S. House of Representatives investigating the origins of COVID and the federal government’s gain of function research pushed a new memo Sunday claiming new evidence suggests Dr. Anthony Fauci “prompted the drafting” of “Proximal Origins” to disprove the lab leak theory.