Metzl: Mainstream Media Approach to Lab Leak Was ‘Lazy’ and Dangerous Approach of Just Opposing the Other Tribe

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN International’s “Amanpour,” Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Jamie Metzl stated that, on the origins of the coronavirus, “the mainstream media got into this habit that I think became a little bit lazy” of assuming everything President Trump said is a lie and “if we all just become mirror images of the opposition, we’re in danger and our democracy is in danger.”

Metzl stated, “I’m a progressive Democrat. I was a fierce critic of President Trump. I was completely unhappy and vocally so with a lot of what President Trump did and said, and I completely distrusted his motives. But as a thinking person, I didn’t think that the appropriate response to that was to feel, well, if Trump says something, then I need to say and believe the opposite.”

He added, “I do think that, also, the mainstream media got into this habit that I think became a little bit lazy, well, Trump says something, and then we have a fact-check story which says, here’s what Trump said, and here’s why it’s lying, and we’re going to add this to the list that The Washington Post and others were keeping of whatever tens of thousands of outright lies. But even a broken clock is right twice a day. In my view, in his totally inappropriate and probably even at that time uninformed way, President Trump said something that just happened to be possibly true. And he said it in a terrible way. And that’s why I think this tribalism of how we think, how we process information, how we present formation, is really dangerous, because if we all just become mirror images of the opposition, we’re in danger and our democracy is in danger.”

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