There is rarely, if ever, such a thing as objective truth when it comes to politics. There are always multiple perspectives.
Make no mistake here - NPR has an agenda to push and they are masterfully skilled in doing so; evidenced by the people who still believe it's a non-partisan "just the truth" journalism outfit.
Buried in what way? Googling “npr lab leak hypothesis” yields dozens of stories published on NPR sites reporting on that theory, primarily quoting WHO and US government reports. I wouldn’t call that burying. You might not like what their sources say and may think there are sources they ignored, but calling that burying without pointing out those omissions doesn’t seem reasonable.
Every story that shows in search results is something that dismisses the Lab Leak theory as being farcical and pushed by a Right-Wing Anti-China agenda.
Yet... it was and still is the single most plausible theory - and today there's a lot of evidence to indicate it is more likely true than not.
So yes, NPR did suppress the lab leak hypothesis, very successfully. There are many today that still hold it to be some sort of racist conjecture.
As the parent mentioned - there's many other examples if we review the past few years major stories, including the Hunter Biden Laptop fiasco that, according to NPR and others seeking to suppress the story, was "certified Russian disinformation", etc.
While I agree NPR was too quick to reject and smear the lab-leak hypothesis, it doesn't help your case to include the Hunter Biden Laptop hysteria that was fabricated whole-cloth and never had an ounce of substance to it.
> the Hunter Biden Laptop hysteria that was fabricated whole-cloth and never had an ounce of substance to it.
None of what you have said is even close to any resemblance of any sort of truth. I hope you will dig past the partisan reporting to educate yourself further on this particular political cover up.
Is it the job of responsible news media to report on hypotheses, as opposed to substantiating things with facts? The lab leak hypothesis was initially pushed in the mainstream as pure speculation in support of the do nothing President deflecting blame onto anyone else rather than accepting the responsibility of leadership. That echoes to this day. There is indeed a huge intellectual travesty around the topic, as well as most other matters about Covid, and blame for that is shared between both teams of partisans.
What else would you call reflexively blaming China rather than acknowledging there is a problem? Even if China deliberately created and spread Covid, we still needed domestic leadership, not "it's just like the flu". I was still giving Trump the benefit of the doubt figuring he was going to come around to addressing reality by at least June, but nope. He essentially had been handed a shoe-in second term on a silver platter for being a crisis time President, but threw it away for what we can only guess.
We can debate policy and what-not until we're both blue in the face.
What facts there are clearly demonstrate the Trump Administration started the development and roll-out for mass vaccination. All of the shutdowns and other well-meaning-but-misguided "flatten the curve" plans became politically virtuous. In hindsight, almost all of these efforts were for not, and many caused more harm than good.
Within all that noise - China most likely did have a lab leak from a lab that the US Government already knew was severely lacking safety precautions. Trump saying that out loud caused a knee-jerk reaction from his opponents and suddenly China was made to look like a victim of racism, etc.
NPR and similar ran with that narrative and buried the most probable cause because it made Trump look like an incompetent racist moron - which is good for their agenda.
Today, here we are, debating NPR propaganda like it was reality. So, I'd say it worked quite well...
I was talking about leadership. Making broad appeals to all constituents, to encourage people to do societally beneficial things without having to resort to the force of law. "Stay home and wear a respirator when you do go out" would have gone a long way to obviating the draconian state responses. In my state, the governor made such a stay at home suggestion but no actual order. It worked great because most people followed the advice rather than seeing the subject as an impingement on their rights to rage against.
I do agree that half of the sensationalist media reflexively reaches for the racism card to create outrage, and often times it's baseless or a red herring at best. But it takes two "sides" to stoke the "culture war", and Trump most certainly played the part.
This. There is a reason why I included the phrase "sometimes annoyingly so" and didn't particularly praise it. It's... fine, more or less, both helped and hobbled by its efforts at journalistic triangulation while doing its job of touching on some points of currency and providing mental snack material.
And the fact that I listen to it or find it interesting is not an endorsement much less an absence of criticism. I'm listening to Christian radio networks as well (share similar dial segments, it's interesting to find out what's going on there, get a different take on the news, hear what's going 'round in terms of sermons and CCM these days, what's that you say, a Christian values investment fund, sounds not grifty at all, I am intrigued), college radio, freakin' Pacifica.
