Objective journalism is a necessary component of a free and democratic society. Without it, "availability cascades" and "rumor mills" are pervasive. Some of the cited examples are great examples of where journalism failed the people and where people -- validly -- turned to rumors as a source of information.

If you want to manage opinion and you use journalism to that end, it will unequivocally end with the loss of deference to authoritative voice, irrevocably. And that's known, which makes it an end-game strategy, in case you wanted to know where we're at.

This is great timing, I was debating whether or not to ask those intro questions on the lab leak thread. More specifically, why do people care so much.