Former Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler acknowledged Thursday that he was “completely wrong” to label the COVID-19 lab leak theory “doubtful” in a 2020 headline.
In an interview with theeditors.com founder Ira Stoll, Kessler addressed eroding trust in fact-checkers from conservatives, pointing to the 2020 Washington Post fact check titled “Was the new coronavirus accidentally released from a Wuhan lab? It’s doubtful.”
Kessler said the work on the piece by his Fact Checker video team was sound but admitted he made a mistake in how he framed the headline.
“One of the reporters on the piece came up to me the next day and said, ‘I think you made a real mistake by putting ‘it’s doubtful’ here. Because I’m uncertain where it stands, and you framed it in a way that made it seem more definitive than what we came up with,’” Kessler recalled.
“That’s on me. I screwed up,” he continued. “She recently left the Washington Post to go to another place. In my goodbye remarks, I mentioned, this explains why you should always listen to Sarah, because she’s right, and I was completely wrong about this.”
Kessler said the fact check focused mainly on whether the coronavirus was engineered as a bioweapon rather than on its origins in nature or a laboratory.
“It’s the headline. The piece itself…” Kessler began, before Stoll interjected, “People only remember the headline.”
“Like I said, that’s on me,” Kessler replied.
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to
The Washington Post for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
The original fact-check argued that scientific evidence at the time “strongly supports” the theory that COVID-19 came from nature and claimed that “too many unexpected coincidences” would have been required for a lab leak. It also noted that the Chinese government was unwilling and unable to provide further information.
In 2020, Kessler defended the piece in a Twitter post directed at Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, writing, “I fear @tedcruz missed the scientific animation in the video that shows how it is virtually impossible for this virus jump from the lab. Or the many interviews with actual scientists. We deal in facts, and viewers can judge for themselves.”
By 2021, Kessler wrote a new fact-check saying the lab leak theory “suddenly became credible” after new evidence emerged.
He criticized the Trump administration for its early promotion of the theory, writing, “The Trump administration also sought to highlight the lab scenario but generally could only point to vague intelligence. The Trump administration’s messaging was often accompanied by anti-Chinese rhetoric that made it easier for skeptics to ignore its claims.”
The Washington Post was among the first outlets to dismiss the lab leak theory, calling it a “coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked” in February 2020.
