During the height of the global coronavirus pandemic, then-CNN president Jeff Zucker banned the network’s staff from following the lab-leak theory despite mounting evidence. According to a CNN insider, Zucker dismissed the theory as a “Trump talking point.” The CNN insider told Fox News "People are slowly waking up from the fog…It is kind of crazy that we didn't chase it harder." As the Washington Free Beacon reports, “the FBI and Energy Department have both concluded that a laboratory leak at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology most likely caused the pandemic.” However, when then-president Donald Trump, alongside some Republican legislators and media outlets pursued the lab-leak theory, CNN vehemently fought against the facts:

In a February 18, 2020, "Facts First" examination of the lab-leak theory, CNN insisted that "it's possible, yet unlikely, that the lab was connected to the start of the outbreak."

An April 2020 headline read, "Nearly 30% in the US believe a coronavirus theory that's almost certainly not true."

CNN host Jake Tapper called the theory a "new, bizarre conspiracy theory" pushed by Republicans, while network anchor John Vause deemed it "misinformation." In an interview with Fox last week, FBI director Christopher Wray said the agency has known "for quite some time now" that COVID's origins are "most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan."

"U.S. State Department cables written in 2018 and internal Chinese documents show that there were persistent concerns about China's biosafety procedures, which have been cited by proponents of the lab-leak hypothesis," the Wall Street Journal reported