Commentary: A pinch of truth

On March 16, 2025, the New York Times ran a piece by opinion columnist Zeynep Tufekci titled “We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives.” The piece outlines how the Times was misled into reporting that a lab leak was unlikely to have caused the COVID-19 epidemic.

With more than 15,000,000 daily visits to its website, the New York Times is arguably the single most influential source of news in America today. Unlike its more heavily trafficked competitors, such as Google and YouTube, the Times, with about 1700 reporters, creates its own content, making it the 800-pound gorilla of the news. Many of the stories we read elsewhere actually originate in the Times.

So when the New York Times runs a story telling us how it was misled about the origin of a pandemic that killed millions, that story is itself big news.

I found the piece heartening.

According to Gallup, in 1976, about 70% of Americans trusted the traditional print and broadcast media. Today that’s down to about 30%. Simply put, most people no longer trust the legacy media.

If that lost trust is ever to be regained, it will be through the kind of honest, self-critical journalism exemplified by this New York Times piece.

In broad strokes, then, here’s how they were misled.

In 2019, the Wuhan Institute of Technology was studying various coronavirus strains in its secure biolabs when a new and virulent strain infected people nearby. Common sense suggested a lab leak.

In 2020, several prominent scientists and high-ranking officials from various governmental and non-governmental organizations in the medical research community assured the New York Times and other media outlets that the COVID pandemic almost certainly did not start with a lab leak. They suggested that the far more likely cause was a “spillover from nature.”

At that juncture, it appears that the Times did not assign a team of reporters to thoroughly investigate the apparent tension between common sense and the authoritative pronouncements. It ran with the pronouncements, as did most of the media.

However, a loosely knit group of internet researchers, independent scientists, and relatively obscure journalists did go on to investigate that tension and eventually found that several prominent scientists and high-ranking officials had deliberately lied to the media, probably to hide their role not only in sponsoring but actually in funding the research being conducted by the Wuhan Institute of Virology. That research included efforts to enhance the transmissibility and lethality of the coronavirus.

A summary of the uncovered evidence is available on the U.S. Right to Know website, a nonprofit that investigates corruption in public health research.

The belief that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from the Wuhan lab was once dismissed as a debunked conspiracy theory. Today, the lab leak theory is widely held to be the most probable hypothesis. Ironically, the only conspiracy was among that group of prominent scientists and high-ranking officials who so skillfully steered the Times away from the lab leak theory.

What are the lessons here?

First, news outlets should be skeptical of authoritative pronouncements, especially those made by high-ranking officials. Such pronouncements should be thoroughly investigated before they are passed on to readers as true.

I mean, sometimes high-ranking officials lie, right?

They may lie about weapons of mass destruction. They may lie about a laptop computer. They may lie about an office break-in. They may lie about a dossier. They may lie about a research project gone horribly wrong.

The list of possibilities is endless.

Second, when a news outlet discovers that it has been misled, it should immediately apologize to its readers and print a thorough explanation and correction. Anything less could further harm its reputation, already damaged by the misleading piece.

A belated and equivocal correction might cause even the casual reader to believe that the news outlet was merely serving as a mouthpiece for high-ranking officials. Some readers might even lose trust in that news outlet to the point where they cancel their subscriptions.

That is why “We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives” is such a landmark story. The Times made a mistake, admitted it, apologized for it, and corrected it. Some critics point out that they could have acted a bit sooner and that their regret could have been conveyed somewhat less tacitly, but that is quibbling.

The Times did the right thing and, after all, trust can only be restored one small truth at a time.

If the New York Times were to run a few more such pieces, I might once again take out a subscription.