What do you call a cabal of American newspapers, tech companies (policing social media), and politicians (attacking Trump/conservatives) simultaneously conflating the two theories (malicious artificial virus versus leak of natural virus), attacking anyone suggesting an accidental lab leak aggressively, and censoring discussion of the same? It isn’t just “China influenced corporate press”. It’s the entirety of the left and left-leaning institutions (news, tech) that voluntarily participated in this mass gaslighting.
People often stir up fears of foreign influence but in the last few years it really has seemed like the biggest sources of inorganic influence and “propaganda” has been domestic.
There has been a massive, concerted effort by the PRC to deflect culpability. I'm a long time china observer/sinophile, and Chinese social media was abuzz with conspiracy theories that the virus was released by the US military before all the nonsense conspiracies started in the States. In review, China has accused the USA, Japan, Italy, Korea, and probably some others I'm forgetting for releasing the virus.
> conflating the two theories (malicious artificial virus versus leak of natural virus)
I have certainly been puzzled by this, for example in a Washington Post article. By conflating the two, lab escape became a "fringe conspiracy theory" rather than a hypothesis that should be investigated.
The people who work at these institutions were often educated in the best universities in the country. And yet they speak in lockstep fashion in this "sloppy" manner. I think you give them too much credit.
People often stir up fears of foreign influence but in the last few years it really has seemed like the biggest sources of inorganic influence and “propaganda” has been domestic.