CNN claimed to break big news Monday. According to leaked documents from Chinese authorities verified by six independent experts including a forensic analysis of the files, China deliberately underreported the severity of its early coronavirus outbreak in the Hubei province.
The novel Wuhan coronavirus, named after the Hubei capital that saw its first major outbreak, would later spread across the globe. It has infected more than 63 million people and killed more than 1.46 million, according to Johns Hopkins University, which doesn’t include those who died from draconian lockdowns. And make no mistake, people have died from the lockdowns.
CNN exclusive: Vast trove of leaked documents shows China underreported Covid-19 numbers, took weeks to diagnose new cases and didn’t disclose a December flu spike in Hubei https://t.co/VwQzKLsPNt
— CNN (@CNN) November 30, 2020
According to CNN, China publicly reported 2,478 new coronavirus cases on Feb. 10 in the Hubei province. Internal documents show, however, that 5,918 new cases had actually been detected.
The problem with CNN’s supposedly blockbuster reporting, however, is that it revealed nothing the honest news consumer didn’t already know, and which The Federalist had already reported for months, including here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. The Federalist was smeared and jeered for steadfastly reporting the truth that the novel virus originated in Wuhan, China and that China’s claims about the virus couldn’t be trusted based on the communist regime’s documented pattern of lies. For refusing to back down from the truth under politicized pressure, The Federalist and other right-leaning outlets were constantly attacked.
For months it’s been brazenly obvious that China was deliberately underreporting its cases of the Wuhan virus. The Chinese government lied about every aspect of the global crisis, including its origin, while silencing whistleblowers who sounded the alarm, hiding crucial information from health experts, and pushing the World Health Organization into lying about the nature of the virus itself. At the pandemic’s onset, China again proved it cannot be trusted with its own statistics.
Subsequent reporting in April on a classified brief delivered to the White House later showed the U.S. intelligence community believed China was fabricating its public figures on the virus. Hard evidence that was public at the time supported the intelligence community’s claims.
That includes a report from the government-funded nonprofit Radio Free Asia finding the death toll in Wuhan to be far higher than the 3,000 deaths the Chinese government was claiming at the time. Examining funeral home capacity and recent urn shipments in the Hubei province, Radio Free Asia found that deaths attributable to the virus actually totaled somewhere around 46,800 in March. Above all else, believing China’s numbers defied common sense.
By early April, China began lifting lockdown restrictions and reported artificially lowered cases and deaths to the rest of the world struggling to contain a virus it knew practically nothing about, thanks in part to China’s refusal to share honest knowledge.
“U.S. reports 1,264 coronavirus deaths in over 24 hours,” NBC News tweeted on April 7. “Meanwhile in China, where the pandemic broke out, not a single new coronavirus death was reported.” These falsehoods from China were used by corporate media as a cudgel against Trump, incredibly claiming that a communist country was doing better than the freest country in the world based on taking China’s doctored numbers at face value.
U.S. reports 1,264 coronavirus deaths in over 24 hours.
Meanwhile in China, where the pandemic broke out, not a single new coronavirus death was reported. https://t.co/ooXkR9X2L5
— NBC News (@NBCNews) April 7, 2020
NBC was far from alone in spewing this Chinese propaganda.
China reported no deaths from COVID-19 today — for the first time since it began publishing data about the outbreak more than two months ago.https://t.co/TX5qxNu04r
— NPR (@NPR) April 7, 2020
CORONAVIRUS LATEST: https://t.co/iW1TZcjwqB
— U.S. death toll nears 11,000.
— Cases top 10,000 in Africa.
— France has not yet peaked, health minister warns.
— China reports no new deaths for first time since January.
— Japan declares state of emergency for seven prefectures.— ABC News (@ABC) April 7, 2020
Mainland China reported no coronavirus deaths for the first time since the pandemic began https://t.co/V0tlFF8Uzn pic.twitter.com/NMUJBvx3DP
— Reuters (@Reuters) April 7, 2020
Perhaps no American outlet however, carried more water for the propaganda arm of the Chinese Communist Party than CNN itself, despite breaking news undermining its own reporting months later.
Of all of @CNN’s people on the anti-Trump beat, it seems @jgriffiths was dedicated to covering for China in their response, and obfuscating the truth in criticism from Trump and others. pic.twitter.com/1nUEqHv8tJ
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 1, 2020
China reported no new novel coronavirus deaths or locally transmitted cases yesterday, according to the country's National Health Commission.
There were 32 new cases — all of them imported from abroad. https://t.co/zrsGxqFvYd
— CNN International (@cnni) April 7, 2020
In fact, the weight CNN carried for the CCP even led Federalist editor Kylee Zempel to pen a piece headlined, “Who Wrote This Pro-Communist China Article? CNN or Xi Jingping?”
Several other major American media outlets joined the effort lauding China’s triumph based on fabricated figures while condemning President Donald Trump for blaming the virus on the east Asian adversary.
@ABC is more or less indistinguishable from state-run media in China on this one. pic.twitter.com/1Ltred6IbR
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 1, 2020
@NewYorker had Chinese propaganda covered from both angles – first applauding their response (glossing over the arrests and killing/disappearing of dissidents) and then going in on how Trump was wrong to blame them. pic.twitter.com/50JVYym8mZ
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 1, 2020
Time, space and patience are at a premium, so grouping together. Here’s @businessinsider (the doctors who had been disappeared couldn’t be reached for comment on “China look[ing] good”) @washingtonpost and @ForeignPolicy. pic.twitter.com/erzkqHNnI1
— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) December 1, 2020
The same outlets that had used the phrase “Wuhan coronavirus” then began attacking the president for saying “Wuhan coronavirus” after the Chinese Communist Party successfully weaponized the United States’s woke media elites to deflect its responsibility for the virus they released to the world by calling the term racist.
Liberal media pundits want you to think referring to the coronavirus as the "Wuhan" or "Chinese" virus is racist.
Here's just a few of the times the liberal media did just that. pic.twitter.com/ss3kV5smSP
— MRCTV (@mrctv) March 12, 2020
Even though it’s common practice to name novel diseases after a population or site of its first major outbreak, activist journalists spent previous time during White House briefings to launch their favorite line of attack by calling the president racist.
President Trump is asked about using the term "Chinese Virus":
“China was putting out information, which was false, that our military gave this to them, that was false. And rather than having an argument, I have to call it where it came from. It came from China.” pic.twitter.com/Vs0L0tXUmB
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 17, 2020
China is broadly known to inflame racial tensions within its foreign adversaries as a form of information warfare and agitprop. The Chinese government carries out literal ethnic cleansing programs on minorities within China, and to cover up its sins attacks the United States as racist, even though Americans are among the least racist people in the world, according to global surveys.
And U.S. media eagerly gobbled the bait once again, freely assisting a U.S. adversary in attacking their own nation’s social harmony and ability to focus on the vulnerable during a global pandemic.