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Sinclair to delay segment featuring 'Plandemic'
conspiracy theory
The report sparked an immediate outcry on social
media, where the video has been largely banned on Facebook and YouTube.
"After further review, we have decided to delay
this episode's airing, Sinclair said in a statement Saturday. "We will
spend the coming days bringing together other viewpoints and provide additional
context. All stations have been notified not to air this and will instead be
re-airing last week’s episode in its place."
By AUBREE
ELIZA WEAVER
07/25/2020
04:31 PM EDT
Sinclair
Broadcasting on Saturday said it will delay its scheduled airing of a news
segment featuring a viral conspiracy theory surrounding Anthony Fauci’s role in
the Covid-19 pandemic.
“America
This Week” host Eric Bolling was scheduled to air an interview with Judy
Mikovits, a medical researcher featured in the “Plandemic” video that claims
Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, was responsible for the
creation of the coronavirus, Media Matters reported.
The report
sparked an immediate outcry on social media, where the video has been largely
banned on platforms including Facebook and YouTube.
“I
recognize that this segment does need to be reworked to provide better context,
and as such we are delaying the airing of the episode for one week,” Bolling
said in a statement posted to his Twitter feed on Saturday afternoon.
Fauci
recently has talked about becoming the target of death threats over his public
comments on the coronavirus pandemic, which have often contradicted the
policies of President Donald Trump and his administration.
Media
Matters reported that Bolling introduced the prerecorded interview by referring
to Mikovits as “an expert in virology” and someone who had previously worked
with Fauci. In the interview, Bolling spoke with Mikovits and her attorney,
Larry Klayman, about “Plandemic” as well as their plans to sue Fauci.
Bolling
also spoke to Fox News medical contributor Dr. Nicole Saphier in response to
Mikovits’ claims. Saphier noted that it was “highly unlikely” that Fauci was to
blame for the pandemic, and then she and Bolling weighed other theories for how
the virus spread and escalated.
Prior to
making the decision to delay the episode, both Bolling and Sinclair said that
while they were allowing the segment to run, they were in no way endorsing the
documentary or its message.
“I have
always welcomed all points of on my show and have consistently stood for free
speech in my 15 years in media,” Bolling said. “In this case, admittedly I was
caught off guard by some of Dr. Mikovits’ claims. At no point did I agree with
her. Further, I brought on another doctor to debunk the theories she espoused.
I repeat: I do not agree with Dr. Mikovits.”
In his
announcement that this week’s segment would be delayed, Bolling added that he
has “immense respect for Dr. Fauci” and views him as “the leading expert on
this topic.” He also said that he has attempted to have Fauci on his program to
discuss Covid-19 and that the invitation still stands.
"After
further review, we have decided to delay this episode's airing, Sinclair said
in a statement Saturday. "We will spend the coming days bringing together
other viewpoints and provide additional context. All stations have been
notified not to air this and will instead be re-airing last week’s episode in
its place."
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Local TV stations across US to air conspiracy
theory on Fauci
Sinclair stations to run interview with Plandemic
researcher who claims infectious disease expert created the coronavirus
Martin
Pengelly and Oliver Milman in New York
Sat 25 Jul
2020 16.56 BSTLast modified on Sat 25 Jul 2020 17.38 BST
TV stations
across the US owned by Sinclair Television will this weekend run an interview
with a conspiracy theorist who claims baselessly that Dr Anthony Fauci, the
country’s top infectious disease expert, created the coronavirus behind the
current pandemic.
Dr Judy
Mikovits, a former research scientist, is behind the widely discredited
Plandemic video, which makes a string of false and outlandish claims including
that any coronavirus vaccine will kill millions and that beaches should not be
closed because the sand and ocean will somehow treat Covid-19.
Fauci is
the 79-year-old director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious
Diseases. He has served six presidents but Donald Trump has sought to keep him
off television, called him “alarmist” and frequently undermined his work.
The US is
in the grip of a worsening coronavirus outbreak in which more than 4.1m cases
have been recorded and more than 145,000 people have died.
Mikovits’
lawyer, Larry Klayman, also appeared on Sinclair’s America This Week with the
former Fox News host Eric Bolling. The interview was posted online before
broadcast.
According
to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors far-right groups in the US,
Klayman, the founder of the Judicial Watch, is “a pathologically litigious
attorney and professional gadfly notorious for suing everyone from Iran’s
supreme leader to his own mother”.
On
Bolling’s show, Klayman and Mikovits said they planned to sue Fauci because,
Mikovits claimed, in the last decade the doctor “manufactured” and shipped
coronaviruses to Wuhan, China, the origin of the pandemic.
Bolling
told CNN he did not “know of any video [Mikovits] was in prior to or after
appearing on my show” and said: “Frankly, I was shocked when she made the
accusation.”
The host
also said he had questioned Mikovits’ claim, which on air he called “hefty”,
and had added Dr Nicole Saphier, a Fox News contributor, to the show in order
to provide balance.
“I asked
our producers to add Saphier to the show for the express purpose of debunking
the conspiracy theory,” he told CNN. “I believe viewers see that I did not and
do not endorse [Mikovits’] theory.”
Saphier
said it was “highly unlikely” Fauci made the coronavirus. But she also said it
was possible the virus was made in a laboratory.
Leading
Trump allies have pushed that claim as the administration seeks to blame China
for the pandemic. Experts say the disease originated in a wet market, where
live wild animals are sold for food.
Speaking to
the Guardian in May, Professor Eric Oliver, a University of Chicago political
scientist and author of Enchanted America: How Intuition and Reason Divide Our
Politics, said medical conspiracy theories were the most widely circulated and
believed.
“This sort
of contagious disease that’s invisible makes people extremely apprehensive,” he
said, adding that the coronavirus pandemic is “a profoundly displacing event
and the uncertainty and anxiety it has generated in health, the economy and
politics are just really deep.
“Some
people are primed to seek out some sort of simple answer to very complex
political and health issues and into that void conspiracy theories rush right
in.”
Sinclair
offers a considerable platform, through TV stations across the US.
The
company’s links to the Trump administration have come under scrutiny, for
example when in 2018 local news anchors were instructed to read an identical
script criticising “fake” news stories.
Its
chairman, David D Smith, has said that in 2016 he told Trump: “We are here to
deliver your message.”
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