ABC Media Watch program won’t correct record on Wuhan lab leak theory until it proves to be source of Covid-19

Claims Anthony Fauci tried to downplay concerns that Covid-19 came from a lab will not be acknowledged by ABC host Paul Barry unless it proves to be the source of the virus.

New claims that America’s leading infectious diseases adviser ­Anthony Fauci downplayed concerns that Covid-19 originated from a laboratory will not be ­acknowledged by the ABC’s Media Watch program and its host Paul Barry until a lab leak “proves to be the source of the Covid-19 outbreak”.

Since the pandemic began, the TV presenter has on numerous ­occasions been highly critical of Sky News host Sharri Markson’s reporting, including concerns in the science and intelligence ­community that a lab leak was plausible.

A world exclusive by Markson published in The Weekend Australian on Saturday included her interview with Robert Kadlec, ­former assistant secretary for ­preparedness and response at the US Department of Health.

Dr Kadlec said that he, Dr Fauci and National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins had discussed how they could “turn down the temperature” on accusations against China during the early days of the pandemic.

ABC Media Watch host Paul Barry.

Dr Kadlec, in his first ever ­interview, told Markson that they tried to encourage a group of ­leading international scientists to reduce speculation about the ­origins of the virus. In a phone call on February 1, 2020, the scientists discussed concerns that SARS-CoV-2 looked like it might have been genetically engineered.

“When we talked about this in advance of that call, he (Fauci) would just try and see if he could get the scientists to take the temperature down, turn the rhetoric down, to at least find, we’re going to look into this, but we don’t know,” Dr Kadlec told Markson.

The Australian contacted Barry about the latest revelations on the weekend, but he did not ­respond. However, Media Watch executive producer Timothy Latham responded on his behalf in an email: “As Paul has previously said, if the Wuhan lab proves to be the source of the Covid-19 outbreak, we will update viewers and apologise to Ms Markson for our criticism.”

He included a link to an article The Australian published in 2021 asking Barry if he would acknowledge fresh allegations that were ­revealed in a Sky News documentary, What Really Happened in Wuhan, presented by Markson.

In a Media Watch segment on May 5, 2020, Barry dismissed Markson’s initial reporting on the origins of Covid-19 and repeatedly used the phrases “conspiracy theories” and “conspiracy theorists”, finishing his segment by saying: “Conspiracy theories like this are so hard to kill.”

He told viewers in the same report: “So how likely is it that the virus escaped from that Chinese lab? Well in short, it’s not.”

Anthony Fauci. Picture: Getty Images

Among those to initially refute claims the virus could have originated from a lab leak was the ABC’s health expert Dr Norman Swan who in 2020 said he had “looked into this and other journalists have looked into this as well as scientists and there really is very little evidence”. “It’s on the outer bounds of possibility, but really so unlikely that you could say … it’s not the case,” he said.

However in May 2021 he said “in recent weeks alternate views of the sequencing have emerged which are quite compelling and a growing number of respected scientists are making a good argument”.

An ABC spokesman would not comment on the criticisms of Markson’s reporting and there was no response from chair Ita Buttrose.

It has also been revealed on the weekend, by The Wall Street Journal, that Facebook removed content relating to Covid-19 in response to pressure it received from the Biden administration.

The newspaper’s report included revelations about internal company communications, including emails divulging details of executives of Facebook (whose parent company is Meta) discussing how they handled users’ posts about the origin of a pandemic and the administration was seeking to control the narrative. “We were under pressure from the administration and others to do more,” responded a Facebook vice-president in charge of content policy, speaking of the Biden administration. “We shouldn’t have done it.”

Originally published as ABC Media Watch program won’t correct record on Wuhan lab leak theory until it proves to be source of Covid-19