Juno News - April 16, 2020


Fake news journalists need to be called out for their dishonesty

Topics
fake news journalists
Mentioned
John Roberts Justin Ling Danny Sheehan David Ignatius Donald Trump Lancelot COVID-19
Triggering the Left by pointing out Trudeau’s hypocrisy Andrew Scheer on Trudeau, China and the WHO

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

154.12

Word count

1,495

Sentence count

68

Harmful content

Hate speech

5

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

The theory that the coronavirus may have originated in a lab in Wuhan is gaining more credibility each and every day. When the world first learned about the virus, after weeks of cover-up by the Chinese Communist government, and their friends in the World Health Organization, we were told the origin of this virus came from a wet market. But in the past few weeks, major news outlets around the world have begun to revisit and re-question China s initial claims and raise new questions about the origins of this deadly virus.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The theory that the coronavirus may have originated in a lab in Wuhan is gaining more
00:00:11.200 credibility each and every day. When the world first learned about the coronavirus, after weeks
00:00:17.040 of cover-up by the Chinese Communist government and their friends in the World Health Organization,
00:00:22.400 we were told the origin of this virus came from a wet market in Wuhan. We were told to ignore the
00:00:29.040 fact that China's only high-security infectious disease laboratory, a lab infamous for its
00:00:35.040 controversial research and the Chinese government's secrecy around it, the Wuhan Institute for Virology
00:00:41.760 Lab, is located a stone's throw from the wet market where we were told the coronavirus originated.
00:00:49.040 But this was simply a coincidence, we were told, and the mainstream media insisted that we have
00:00:54.560 full faith in the explanation given by the Chinese government. Dissenting thinkers who raised
00:01:00.720 questions about the links between this new coronavirus and China's lone biosafety level 4
00:01:06.640 laboratory located in the same city, well, they were attacked and maligned, and this includes myself.
00:01:12.320 All the way back in January, I raised some concerns. I thought they were valid concerns, 1.00
00:01:16.240 asked questions just as journalists are supposed to do, questioning the link between the possibility
00:01:22.640 that these labs or China's biological warfare program was somehow linked to the deadly virus.
00:01:31.680 Now this is the angle that I'm a little bit more worried or concerned about, which is interesting
00:01:36.320 because nobody else is covering it. Nobody else is covering it. I noticed this story in the Washington
00:01:41.040 Times over the weekend. It says virus hit Wuhan, has two laboratories linked to Chinese biological warfare
00:01:49.200 program. So the deadly animal virus epidemic spreading globally may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory 0.95
00:01:55.840 linked to China's covert biological weapons program, according to an Israeli biological warfare expert.
00:02:01.760 Radio Free Asia this week rebroadcasted a local Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China's most
00:02:07.600 advanced virus research laboratory known as the Wuhan Institute for Virology, Radio Free Asia reported.
00:02:14.640 The lab is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses. So Danny Shohan,
00:02:20.880 who is a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese biological warfare,
00:02:26.000 said the institute is linked to Beijing's covert biological weapons programs. This is a quote from Shohan.
00:02:32.400 Certain laboratories in the institute have probably engaged in terms of research and development in
00:02:37.280 Chinese biological weapons, at least collaterally, yet not as a principal facility of the Chinese
00:02:43.200 biological warfare alignment, he told the Washington Times. Work on biological weapons is conducted as
00:02:49.280 part of a dual civilian military research and is definitely covert, he said in an email. Mr. Shohan
00:02:54.800 holds a doctorate in medical microbiology from 1970 to 1991. He was a senior analyst with the Israeli
00:03:00.000 military intelligence and biological and chemical warfare in the Middle East and worldwide, holding
00:03:04.800 the rank of lieutenant colonel. So that is a little bit concerning. I mean, we don't know anything,
00:03:10.400 and I'm not going to speculate, but I'm just saying that, you know, an expert who knows what he's
00:03:13.920 talking about is linking this. We don't really know exactly what the origins are. Nobody in the media
00:03:18.080 is talking about, but it is definitely worth knowing that China's covert biological weapons
00:03:23.360 is centered in the exact same city where this virus was originating. I'll just leave it at that,
00:03:29.520 not going to speculate, but I think it's interesting, worth noting, not sure why my colleagues in the
00:03:33.680 mainstream media are completely ignoring that fact. But as has become a sad sign of our times,
00:03:39.760 agenda-driven journalists quickly attempted to discredit this line of thinking and this line
00:03:45.760 of questioning. For example, freelance journalist Justin Ling wrote a column in Foreign Policy
00:03:51.920 magazine regurgitating Chinese propaganda and accusing me of spreading misinformation and conspiracy
00:03:58.160 theories simply for asking some questions and quoting an Israeli scientist who is also raising
00:04:03.680 similar concerns. Well, in the past few weeks, major news outlets around the world have begun to revisit
00:04:11.440 and re-question China's initial claims and raise new questions about the origin of this coronavirus.
00:04:19.280 On April 2nd, The Washington Post published a widely shared article by senior foreign affairs columnist
00:04:25.440 David Ignatius entitled, How did COVID-19 begin? Its original story is shaky. I'm going to read from
00:04:32.880 this article because it is really interesting and it really reveals a lot about the questions around the
00:04:38.480 origin of the coronavirus. So he says, scientists have identified the culprit as a bat coronavirus through
00:04:46.560 genetic sequencing. Bats weren't sold at the seafood market, although that market or others could have sold
00:04:52.800 animals that had contact with bats. The Lancelot noted in a January study that the first COVID-19 case
00:04:59.280 in Wuhan had no connection to the seafood market. There's a competing theory of an accidental lab release
00:05:07.040 of bat coronavirus that scientists have been puzzling about for weeks. Less than 300 yards from the seafood
00:05:13.920 market is the Wuhan branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers from that
00:05:20.720 facility and the nearby Wuhan Institute of Virology have posted articles about collecting bat coronaviruses
00:05:27.840 from around China for study to prevent future illnesses. Did one of those samples leak or was
00:05:34.240 hazardous waste deposited in a place where it could have spread? Ignatius goes on, he quotes a Rutgers
00:05:41.360 microbiologist and biosafety expert who described a December video from the Wuhan CDC that shows staffers
00:05:49.840 collecting bat coronaviruses with inadequate personal protective equipment and unsafe operational practices.
00:05:58.320 So this story really, really raised eyebrows. It made a lot of people sort of reconsider the initial
00:06:05.200 Chinese claim. So following this report, officials in the UK said that they too agreed with the possibility
00:06:11.840 that the virus came out of a laboratory in the area. According to a report in the Daily Mail,
00:06:17.520 top British officials stated, quote, there is a credible alternative view to the zoonic theory
00:06:24.080 based on the nature of the virus. Perhaps it is no coincidence that there is a laboratory in Wuhan.
00:06:29.440 It is not discounted. Well, this week saw several more groundbreaking reports that give this alternative
00:06:36.560 theory more credibility. First, the Washington Post released a report this week revealing that the US
00:06:43.440 state department cables warned of safety issues at that same Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses all
00:06:50.400 the way back in 2018. According to the report, US embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility
00:06:57.520 in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate
00:07:03.760 safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. So that was the first
00:07:11.120 indication that we knew that there were problems at these labs and that it went all the way to the
00:07:16.560 top within the US government. Okay, second, on Wednesday evening, we had a bombshell of a news report
00:07:23.200 from Fox News about the same Wuhan lab and the possibility of a leak. So Fox News White House
00:07:30.240 correspondent John Roberts reported that US officials had a high confidence that the coronavirus leaked from a
00:07:38.240 Wuhan lab. He asked the question to President Donald Trump during Trump's nightly briefing on the
00:07:44.800 coronavirus. And this is what that sounded like. John, go ahead. Mr. President, multiple sources
00:07:51.280 are telling Fox News today that the United States government now has high confidence that while the
00:07:56.960 coronavirus is a naturally occurring virus, it emanated from a virology lab in Wuhan, that because of 0.99
00:08:04.640 lack safety protocols, an intern was infected, who later infected her boyfriend, and then went to the
00:08:10.880 wet market in Wuhan, where it began to spread. Does that correspond with what you have heard from
00:08:16.400 officials? Well, I don't want to say that, John, but I will tell you more and more we're hearing the story.
00:08:21.120 And we'll see when you say multiple sources. Now, there's a case where you can use the word sources.
00:08:26.320 On Wednesday evening, Fox News also reported that US officials say that Chinese officials not only lied
00:08:33.600 about the origin of the virus coming from a wet market in Wuhan in order to deflect blame, but
00:08:39.840 also that they destroyed evidence from the lab to prevent a smoking gun. It may have been the
00:08:46.000 costliest government cover-up of all time, a US official told Fox News. Look, as the Chinese communist 1.00
00:08:53.840 officials ramp up their propaganda efforts, working hand in hand with the corrupt and discredited World 0.63
00:09:00.000 Health Organization, it's more important than ever that Canadians know the truth. And that's why it's
00:09:06.400 so important that fake news journalists like Justin Ling at Foreign Policy be called out for their
00:09:12.480 dishonesty. Journalists are supposed to ask questions and search for the truth, not push Chinese propaganda,
00:09:19.120 and not shame other journalists for asking what they think are the wrong questions. Justin Ling's calm in
00:09:25.680 foreign policy is fake news, and it should be taken down immediately. For True North, I'm Candice Malcolm.