NBC promotes Chinese propaganda on virus originating from Wuhan biolab

An NBC news crew visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) last week – after months of seeking permission.  The lab is suspected of being a possible source of the Covid-19 pandemic.  The Chinese response to the NBC team was predictable:  Nothing to do with us… We have no idea where the virus came from.

One expected nothing different.

But NBC’s response was more surprising.  It practically gave the lab a clean bill of health.  All but saying it couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the Covid-19 outbreak.  And all based on a tightly controlled, five-hour guided tour and a couple interviews – with minders present.

The precise origins of the virus may never be determined.  But the NBC report ought to be taught in journalism schools for years to come.

Watch it and re-watch it, and it comes across like an ‘infomercial’.   It has none of the skeptical probing for information and challenging interviewing that are part and parcel of investigative reporting.  Particularly on a front-page topic such as Covid-19.

Indeed, the clip begins with the following exchange between the NBC reporter and the WIV Deputy Director:

NBC Reporter:  “So you’re 100% confident there was no leak?  No accident?”

Deputy Director:  “I’m confident there was no leak.”

NBC Reporter:  “100%?”

Deputy Director:  “100%”

That sets the tone for the entire report.

Washington Post columnist, Josh Rogin, who earlier broke the story of U.S. State Department cables from January 2018 and April 2018 describing safety issues at the lab and its work with bat viruses, criticized the NBC report on Twitter (see below).  He pointed out inaccuracies in the report, and incorrect statements by lab officials that went unchallenged by the NBC reporter.

This @NBCNews report on their field trip to Wuhan Institute of Virology has several errors, but the most glaring is that it misrepresents what U.S. officials wrote in diplomatic cables in 2018. I’ll explain: https://t.co/ocexX0ANB0

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) August 10, 2020

When interviewed by NBC, Wang Yanyi, WIV Director General appeared mystified as she stated U.S. officials only visited once, in March 2018, and bio-safety wasn’t even discussed.

The NBC reporter does not challenge her on this point.

Yet, Josh Rogin had earlier reported that US officials ‘visited three times – both before and after the January 2018 cable.’

As for biosafety?  The January 2018 cable described WIV staff outlining safety concerns and challenges getting trained staff.  Also, they explained the nature of the lab’s studies involving bat-borne viruses connected to SARS.

Also, Rogin points out that the NBC report states that US officials ‘observed’ safety problems at the lab.  Rather, according to Rogin the lab officials told visiting US diplomats about the problems.  The redacted version of the cable is arguably unclear on this point, but one fairly asks how visiting American officials would recognize the specific safety problems cited in the cable?

The cable states:  “…the new lab has a serious shortage of appropriately trained technicians and investigators needed to safely operate this high containment laboratory.”

NBC might have pressed Ms. Wang on the discrepancies between her account and the US State Department account, and get her response on the record.  Given that she was glancing sideways while speaking, perhaps to a minder, one can guess her reply.  It would have been informative nonetheless.

The reporter might also have asked why WIV removed news of the US officials’ March 2018 visit from the lab website?

And there is the matter of who the reporters spoke with at the lab.  Director level officials are one thing, lab workers who were on duty in 2019 and early 2020 are another.  If NBC asked and was turned down, they should say so.

Presumably to support the idea that the virus couldn’t have come from WIV, the NBC reporter goes on to note that the laboratory staff received training in France and the USA.  And that the lab has windows to see in and out.

And what exactly does this prove?

As is par for mainstream media these days, the report includes clips casting President Trump in a negative light, referencing ‘Kung Flu’, ‘China virus’, and ‘China plague”.

It is unclear how this relates to the issue of bio-safety at the Wuhan lab.  But maybe it is more suggestive of mainstream media’s reflexive belief that if Mr. Trump says something it is ipso facto bad.  One almost gets the impression NBC seems to believe President Trump is picking on the poor people at the Wuhan lab – and that is one more point in the lab’s favor.

NBC also mentions that five leading virologists ‘familiar with lab protocols’ said it was improbable the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab.  However, are these lab protocols at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?  Or at such labs in general and in an ideal world?  It does make a difference – and NBC should have explained.

One gets the impression NBC was trying to string together bits of information that somehow in their totality would ‘clear’ the lab.

Firing another round, NBC states that Dr. Anthony Fauci ‘shot down’ the idea of the Wuhan lab being the source of Covid-19.

But as Josh Rogin pointed out, no he didn’t.  He simply didn’t want to entertain the suggestion.  Read the interview.  It isn’t clear that NBC did.

This is worth a closer look given Dr. Fauci’s leading role in the entire pandemic response from the very beginning.

In Dr. Fauci’s cited interview with National Geographic he is asked if the virus is manmade or man-manipulated and if the virus could be ‘natural’ but have been brought into the Wuhan lab and leaked out.

Fauci answers one question clearly enough, but answers one question not at all:

One topic in the news lately has been the origins of SAR-CoV-2. Do you believe or is there evidence that the virus was made in the lab in China or accidentally released from a lab in China?

Fauci: If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats, and what’s out there now is very, very strongly leaning toward this [virus] could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated—the way the mutations have naturally evolved. A number of very qualified evolutionary biologists have said that everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that it evolved in nature and then jumped species.

Sure, but what if scientists found the virus outside the lab, brought it back, and then it escaped?

Fauci: But that means it was in the wild to begin with. That’s why I don’t get what they’re talking about [and] why I don’t spend a lot of time going in on this circular argument.

So what is Dr. Fauci saying?  Put charitably, he seems to be answering the question strictly from the standpoint of a medical scientist who wants to know about the virus itself.  The virus is from nature, and the chain of custody on it from nature to New Yorkers is irrelevant.  What’s relevant is what the virus is, i.e. natural, not the culpability of the Chinese Communist Party in delivering it to us

The interviewer is unsuccessfully trying to get him to answer the question from the standpoint of political accountability.  What was the role of the CCP in possibly collecting, harboring and releasing (intentionally or accidentally) the virus via the Wuhan lab?

He perhaps doesn’t care about that, or wants to avoid a political issue, so he dodged the question like the famous Dr. Bruce Aylward who pretended he didn’t understand the Hong Kong journalist’s question about the World Health Organization not working with Taiwan, and then killed the video connection – becoming an international laughingstock whom WHO subsequently disavowed.

Dr. Fauci said, “that’s why I don’t get what they’re talking about [and] why I don’t spend a lot of time going in on this circular argument.”

One might suggest he knows perfectly well what they are talking about, and the argument is not circular.  It’s linear, logical and rational.  He just doesn’t want to talk about it – and maybe there is the small matter of him having funded earlier research at WIV.

NBC goes on to speak with virologist Peter Daszak, of the EcoHealth Alliance who says the virus couldn’t have come from the lab – though without presenting any evidence.  He is not exactly a disinterested party, having worked with WIV for 16 years on bat research.  And the US National Institute of Health cut his group’s funding earlier this year.

Mr. Daszak argues that ‘The fact they (the lab) published the sequence so quickly suggests they weren’t trying to cover up anything.’

Josh Rogin destroyed this claim in a tweet, saying that “The NBC piece also launders more warped logic by Peter Daszak, who has a direct conflict of interest.”

The NBC piece also launders more warped logic by Peter Daszak, who has a direct conflict of interest. “The fact that they published the sequence so quickly suggests to me that they weren’t trying to cover up anything.” Or, maybe they were so quick because they recognized it.

— Josh Rogin (@joshrogin) August 10, 2020

Moreover, how does Mr. Daszak’s assurance square with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cracking down on all information related to the virus, the lab, and the initial outbreak in Wuhan.

Indeed, the virus broke out in late 2019 (or earlier) and NBC was allowed to visit the lab in August 2020.  Draw your own conclusions.

Also, NBC makes much of simply being allowed in to lab and months of trying.  But what exactly were they expecting to find?

Rogin suggests:  “A piece of paper they (the lab) forgot to throw out that says “Coronavirus Origin Evidence?”

Another observer commented along these lines:

“You mean on their five-hour escorted tour, the journalists did not once see a Wicked Witch of the East stirring a boiling vat of viral toil and trouble with wing of bat and toe of pangolin?”

On one point the NBC report is correct.  There is no publicly available direct evidence – rather than circumstantial evidence – to prove Covid-19 came from a Wuhan lab.  However, that does not ‘clear’ the lab – as the NBC clip implies.

Indeed, The onus should not be on the United States Government to prove lab origination of a virus in China in spite of vigorous CCP cover-up.  Rather, the onus is on the CCP to support an investigation vigorous and intimate enough to disprove it.  As it continues to lie, lab-origination remains a plausible theory that fits the circumstantial evidence.

Indeed, had something like this happened in the United States, the public would be demanding to know – and the press would be ‘all over it.’  Not so in the PRC.  Yet the US press seems willing to provide cover for the Chinese Communist Party.

From the beginning, suggesting the pandemic had some connection to one of the two virology labs in Wuhan was ridiculed by nearly everyone it seems in media, government, and the so-called chattering class.  And this despite the commonsensical observation that a rare virus broke out in the only city in China with a BSL-4 lab (the highest level of bio-security) – and it is a lab that has been studying bats and viruses.

Why is this?  I have no idea.

But NBC’s performance was disappointing for someone who just looking to understand what happened.  Watch the NBC clip as many times as you wish (or read the accompanying written piece) and NBC presents no alternative positions or interviews to contradict the Wuhan Lab and CCP positions.  It comes across as advocacy and curiously uninterested in digging for facts.

Once upon a time, this would not have passed muster.

I had occasion to meet the legendary NBC reporter, John Rich, on Iwo Jima 15 years ago.  (He had landed on Iwo Jima the first day of the battle in 1945).  Had he showed up at the Wuhan Virology Lab last week he’d have been prepared and known what questions to ask.

But the NBC crew in Wuhan last week might have performed well enough to snag an invitation to visit a Uighur Vocational Training School in Xinjiang should they want one.

Perform well enough there and the Walter Duranty Award is within reach.

Grant Newsham is a Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow.