Nate Silver and Mehdi Hasan Throw Down Over Media Coverage of Covid-19 Lab Leak Theory

MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan and FiveThirtyEight EIC Nate Silver threw down on Monday over the recent report on the Department of Energy’s “low confidence” finding that Covid-19 likely leaked from a lab, a revelation that immediately sparked a media firestorm of fingerpointing and condemnations of past censorship.

The spat between Hasan and Silver began with Silver sharing the Wall Street Journal report that scooped the new government assessment. Silver commented on the report, saying, “Welp. The behavior of a certain cadre of scientists who used every trick in the book to suppress discussion of this issue is something I’ll never forget. A huge disservice to science and public health. They should be profoundly embarrassed.”

Hasan took issue with Silver calling out that “certain cadre of scientists” and replied:

The simple reason why so many people weren’t keen to discuss the ‘lab leak’ *theory* is because it was originally conflated by the right with ‘Chinese bio weapon’ conspiracies and continues to be conflated by the right with anti-Fauci conspiracies. Blame the conspiracy theorists.

Silver hit back, taking a screenshot of

Hasan’s comments and attempting a mic drop moment to kill the back and forth. Silver replied, “This is so refreshingly honest. The Bad People thought the lab leak might be true, therefore as journalists we couldn’t be expected to actually evaluate the evidence for it.”

Silver added, “The reason this drives me up the wall is that if you’re ever going to pretend that “misinformation” is a useful category, at least acknowledge it was a massive error to label lab leak discussion as “misinformation” when multiple US government agencies now put the chances ≥50%.”

While Silver ended the reply chain, Hasan still offered a retort, saying, “Nope, stick to numbers because reading my words seems to be hard for you. The ‘Bad People’ wanted to use ‘lab leak’ to distract from Trumpian incompetence, & push racist messages & insane conspiracies. But some of us still hosted debates about lab leak on our shows – did you/531?”

Other Twitter users jumped into the debate. Journalist Candice Bernd replied to Hasan’s tweet regarding the lab leak theory being hijacked by some on the right who tried to turn it into a racist distraction. Bernd replied to Hasan, “It’s the media’s job to un-conflate those things though — not to dismiss the validity of a completely plausible scenario based on that conflation. That’s exactly the formula that cedes the narrative to the far right.”

Hasan doubled

down and replied, “It was dismissed – and continues to be dismissed – because there was no hard evidence for it, and there still isn’t!, and because it has always been part of broader rightwing conspiracies – including the online hysteria and faux outrage right now!”

Debate regarding the platforming of the Covid-19 lab leak conspiracy theory is all but certain to continue to dominate headlines for the foreseeable future as anger, particularly on the right, blasting past censorship on the topic continues to fuel coverage and finger-pointing.