But in the early months of the pandemic, then-CNN president Jeff Zucker would not allow his network to chase down the lab-leak story because he believed it was a “Trump talking point,” according to a well-placed CNN insider.

“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.” …

A CNN headline from April 2020 reading “Nearly 30% in the US believe a coronavirus theory that’s almost certainly not true” was based on a Pew Research poll taken at the time.

“Its origin is up for debate, but it wasn’t made in a lab,” CNN reported. “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.”

[If true — and it hardly seems even questionable at this point — Zucker made the same kind of decision that other mainstream media outlets made, and for the same reason: they all wanted to influence an election. They are political activists, not news organizations. This is just one of the more crass examples. — Ed]