The claws were out on this morning’s episode of The View. Sunny Hostin sharply interrupted Alyssa Farah Griffin as she called out the New York Times for their lack of coverage on the possibility that COVID-19 stemmed from a lab leak in China.
It all started when Hostin slammed the Trump administration for inviting influencers and content creators to apply for credentials to attend White House press briefings.
“Why are they qualified to sit in the White House Briefing Room and tell America what is going on with the country?” she asked. “Traditionally, to become a White House correspondent or to be in that briefing room, you have to have a journalism degree, you have to have qualifications. So I guess the rise of mediocrity is here to stay.”
However, Griffin argued that Americans are losing trust in mainstream media outlets, which, like podcasters and influencers on social media, can be wrong sometimes, too.
“There are a lot of Americans who do feel like the mainstream media got a lot wrong in recent years and while there are editorial standards, I don’t think that we can definitely say, ‘Because you have this degree and you’re with this outlet you’ve never gotten news information wrong,’” she said.
The former White House staffer then pointed to the CIA’s recent claim that COVID-19 “very likely came from a lab leak,” claiming that the New York Times “shut down coverage of that.”
“They wouldn’t publish an op-ed by a senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton, saying that this was a credential theory. At the time, I was at DOD [the Department of Defense] and it was openly discussed as a very real possibility,” Griffin said, while Hostin muttered, “It was low-confidence by the CIA.”
Ignoring her, Griffin added, “There is a fact that the media at times has gotten things wrong.”
Whoopi Goldberg, however, was more concerned with the standards that established media outlets have in place to “correct” themselves when they are wrong. But Hostin was still stuck on Griffin’s reference point.
“But it also matters that the CIA said it was a low-confidence report and that is why the New York Times, which has standards, didn’t report on it!” she fired back, to which Griffin replied, “Withholding the information altogether and saying it’s not a considered theory was what the mistake was.”
The View airs on weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.
The post ‘The View’: Sunny Hostin Fires Back At Alyssa Farah Griffin Over Claims That COVID Stemmed From A Lab Leak appeared first on Decider.
