(TheRedAlertNews.com) – Then-boss Jeff Zucker banned CNN’s journalists from investigating the theory that the COVID-19 pandemic started with a lab leak in China, which he called a “Trump talking point,” a new report reveals.
Zucker was the president of the pro-left TV channel between 2013 and 2022 when he was forced to resign over a sexual affair with a high-ranking coworker.
Fox News has revealed that in the early stage of the coronavirus pandemic, Zucker issued a directive prohibiting journalistic investigations into the Chinese lab leak origin of the virus.
Its report is based on information from a “well-placed CNN insider,” as cited by Breitbart News.
“People are slowly waking up from the fog. It is kind of crazy that we didn’t chase it harder,” the Fox News source said.
The report mentions several CNN stories from the spring of 2020 as examples of Zucker’s policy.
Thus, on March 13, 2020, a CNN “culture writer,” Harmeet Kauer, called the idea that COVID-19 might have originated in a lab a “fringe theory.”
“Nearly 30% in the US believe a coronavirus theory that’s almost certainly not true,” reads the headline of a CNN article by Scottie Andrew from April 13, 2020.
“Its origin is up for debate, but it wasn’t made in a lab,” declared the subheading, making it clear the title above was about the lab leak theory.
“There’s still much we don’t know about the coronavirus pandemic, but virus experts agree on one piece of its origin story: The virus likely originated in a bat, not in a Chinese lab,” Andrew wrote.
The revelation that Jeff Zucker prohibited CNN’s staffers from following the “Trump talking point” comes after last week The Wall Street Journal disclosed the US Department of Energy had concluded the coronavirus was most likely leaked from a Chinese lab.
The WSJ report said the Energy Department had given documents to the White House and key members of Congress with its conclusion that the pandemic started with a laboratory leak in Communist China.
The DOE thus became the second major US government agency after the Federal Bureau of Investigation to conclude that the virus likely spread via a Chinese laboratory incident.
Four other US government bodies and a national intelligence panel still defend the “natural transmission” origin theory, while two remain undecided.
“[T]he FBI has, for quite some time now, assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said on Fox News last week.
Several weeks ago, the House Oversight Committee, now Republican-controlled, and the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic started an investigation into the origins of COVID-19.
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Former CNN President Jeff Zucker ordered employees during Trump’s administration not to investigate the theory that the coronavirus pandemic was sparked by a lab leak in China, calling it a “Trump talking point,” according to a report. https://t.co/rzArGd8vUj
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) March 6, 2023
