Rock musician Sean Lennon, the son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, is slamming the news media for its coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, saying that they are spreading Chinese Communist propaganda and engaging in double standards.
Sean Lennon took to Twitter Wednesday to air his frustration with the way journalists are reporting on the global outbreak, especially when it comes to China. “The official media have lost their legitimacy,” he concluded.
Lennon said that journalists have been parroting official Chinese figures with little skepticism. The rocker appeared to be referring to numerous mainstream media reports claiming that the U.S. has surpassed all countries in terms of COVID-19 diagnoses. But those reports — including those from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal — rely on Beijing’s questionable claim that China has only seen 82,361 cases.
On Wednesday, U.S. intelligence officials reportedly concluded that China has been concealing the true extent of the coronavirus outbreak within its borders by under-reporting total cases and deaths. Bloomberg reported on a new intelligence study that found that China’s public reporting is intentionally incomplete and that China’s numbers are fake.
“Why do we need U.S. ‘Intelligence’ to tell us what we all already know?” Lennon tweeted.
Lennon also called out news outlets that have engaged in a double standard by initially calling the illness the “Wuhan virus” only to later tell people that using such terms is racist.
Numerous outlets including CNN, Buzzfeed, and The Washington Post have called the illness the “Wuhan coronavirus” or the “Chinese coronavirus.” But since President Donald Trump started calling it the “Chinese virus,” some of the same outlets have warned that such a name constitutes racist language.
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