Fauci’s Diaries Are A Media Scandal — That’s Why The Media Aren’t Reporting On Them Fairly

Anthony Fauci’s newly released diaries include explosive revelations about how he lied publicly about the Covid fatality rate, the lab leak theory, school closures, and vaccines (among other things). Yet according to the propaganda press, the biggest takeaways are that Fauci disliked President Donald Trump, worried about threats, and really liked being famous. But perhaps that framing is no surprise: The diary entries don’t merely implicate Fauci for perpetrating the greatest coverup and attack on American freedoms through his “science.” They also expose that the same propagandists who pretended to be objective journalists while covering Fauci and the pandemic were the same people soliciting Fauci’s advice on how to interview Trump administration officials, managing Fauci’s public image, and trying to befriend him. So naturally, the propaganda press has to cover the diaries in a way that minimizes the serious revelations and signals to readers that the story is nothing too concerning. The New York Times’ Sheryl Gay Stolberg headlined her piece: “Fauci, in Private Diary, Reflected on Covid’s Origins and His Own Fame.” Stolberg opened by recounting a January 2020 entry from Fauci in which he said the virus could have jumped from animals to humans and that the Wuhan wet market accelerated the spread of the virus. She then explained that Sen. Rand Paul released the diaries “as part of his investigation into whether the virus might have leaked from a laboratory and whether, as Mr. Paul claims, Dr. Fauci lied to Congress about it.” After acknowledging why Paul released the entries, though, she quickly told readers there was nothing important in those entries. “The diary does not provide the smoking gun the senator is seeking,” Stolberg opined. “Rather, it echoes past disclosures showing Dr. Fauci wrestling with a fast-moving crisis as scientists’ views evolved.” [READ NEXT: 6 Years Later, Fauci’s Diary Confirms The Federalist Was Right About Everything] But the “smoking gun” evidence is there for anyone willing to open his eyes to see. Take, for example, Fauci’s testimony before Congress that “the seasonal flu that we deal with every year has a mortality of 0.1 percent” and that “[t]he stated mortality over all of this when you look at all the data including China is about three percent. It first started off as two and now three.” He added the virus is “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.” Yet privately, Fauci said the “case fatality rate” was “more like 0.2-0.3 % rather than 2.0%,” as reported in these pages by The Federalist’s Shawn Fleetwood. Despite this, Stolberg instead ignores these damning revelations to focus on how Fauci was “obsessed with himself” (as if that’s the great offense) and that the entries show “the pressure he was under, as he became the public face of the government’s response while at the same time countering what he called ‘slanderous lies’ about him spread by ‘extreme right elements in society.’” In other words, Fauci was actually the victim. Stolberg wrote that “critics spent much of the past several days digging through the records for tidbits in which he appeared to contradict himself.” One supposed “tidbit” is how Fauci publicly said he had “nothing to do” with school closures but that he wrote in his diary six years prior that he “convinced” Mayor Bill de Blasio to shut New York City schools down. Despite the diary entries proving the “critics” right, Stolberg nonetheless framed the story around Fauci’s victimhood, celebrity status, and the conduct of the “critics” who happened to notice the farce. NBC News’ Monica Alba headlined her piece: “Anthony Fauci’s journal reveals how the Trump and Biden White Houses handled their Covid cases,” with a subhead arguing the release of the journal gives “behind-the-scenes insight into Covid with both presidents” as if that were the purpose or big takeaway from the diaries. The Washington Post’s Sammy Westfall and Dan Diamond wrote, “Fauci’s diary reveals his thoughts on a ‘rambling’ Trump and his own fame.” The subhead read: “Released by GOP Sen. Rand Paul, diary entries from the federal scientist who helped lead the Covid response spotlight the internal battle over how to handle the outbreak.” The article opened by stating Fauci “privately complained about President Donald Trump’s ‘rambling’ and reveled in media coverage of his role.” Its fifth paragraph characterized the entries as an “intimate look at how the prominent scientist at the center of the nation’s pandemic response navigated two presidential administrations during the spiraling health crisis.” The Post then lists “key takeaways” of the entries such as Fauci’s “hot and cold relations with Trump” and how Fauci spent the first year of Covid “trying to counteract the president’s comments downplaying the outbreak,” followed by Fauci’s thoughts on the lab leak, his “moments of celebrity,” and threats made against him. (Notably, the lab leak section is rather favorable to Fauci). Once again, the media present Fauci as battling Trump (the propaganda press’s favorite narrative) and having to navigate working with the Trump administration, confronting attacks, deliberating on scientific theories, and adjusting to fame. At least, that’s what they do when they aren’t ignoring the new revelations entirely, as is the case with multiple television news networks, such as CBS, ABC, and NBC. But such generous treatment by the press also allows its members to avoid confronting what the diaries reveal about the press itself. Fauci’s entries show that prominent “journalists” from Dana Bash to Jake Tapper to Chuck Todd all acted more as friends, advisers, admirers, and mouthpieces for his preferred narrative — all the while Fauci was deliberately misleading and lying to the public about the pandemic. Journalists who were doing their job would’ve pressed Fauci on glaring inconsistencies, logical points, and common sense and would have been led to the same conclusion that readers of Fauci’s entries have now reached: Fauci was lying for his own personal ego at the expense of our livelihoods, lives, and national well-being. For example, Fauci noted in his diary that he gave Tapper questions to ask another member of Trump’s coronavirus task force. In another instance, Tapper allegedly called Fauci to ask whether an interview caused Fauci any “problems” and later hosted Fauci for a dinner. Todd advised Fauci on how to handle legitimate criticism from Fox News and Tucker Carlson. In another entry Fauci bragged about how he pushed The Washington Post not to pursue a story about whether China pressured then-World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus not to declare an international emergency. “I probably stopped her from writing the story,” Fauci recounted. It’s those revelations that explain why the propaganda press is dismissing the diary entries now with its dishonest angles and framing. The very people who were supposed to scrutinize Fauci’s handling of the pandemic were privately trying to protect, impress, and maintain access to him. Any serious read of the diary entries would therefore also require these same propagandists to investigate themselves — and they’ll never do that. Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2 ABCAnthony FauciCBSCOVIDCovid pandemicCovid-19Donald TrumpDr. Anthony FauciFatality ratefluLab LeakNBCNew York TimesRand PaulWashington PostWuhan