After over a year of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s critics including those at Fox News being ridiculed by others in the MSM and their Democrat allies for merely reporting on and asking questions about the origins of the Wuhan coronavirus, it’s understandable why the network would devote even more extensive coverage to the issue now that those who spent a year bashing them over it have suddenly done an about-face and are now taking the Wuhan lab leak theory seriously.

But though CNN has acknowledged by some of their own recent reporting that the renewed debate over the issue is worth covering, old habits die hard for the network, which was demonstrated this week after the Fauci emails were released.

For instance, instead of taking a critical look at what he wrote and what was written to him, CNN predictably plumped Fauci’s pillow by proclaiming that the emails “reveal the weight that came with his role as a rare source of frank honesty”:

Thousands of emails from and to Dr. Fauci reveal the weight that came with his role as a rare source of frank honesty within the Trump administration's Covid-19 task force https://t.co/vCKrWJFOc0

— CNN (@CNN) June 2, 2021

Then there was the network’s resident media hall monitor and noted Fauci apologist Brian Stelter subtly bashing Fox News’ “Covid-origin-focused” coverage by highlighting a clip featuring Fauci’s boss and NIH director Dr. Francis Collins urging Fox anchor Martha MacCallum to move on from questioning him on the lab leak issue in the interest of saving lives and stuff:

NIH director urging covid-origin-focused Fox News to talk more about vaccines >> "So please, could we have a bit more of the focus on how we're going to save lives, while we're talking about how this started? We need both of those, don't we?" pic.twitter.com/7K0BfGaJWw

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 3, 2021

Not to be outdone, in their nightly newsletter last night, Stelter’s sidekick Oliver Darcy also admonished Fox News, saying that while coverage of the Fauci emails was “fair game,” Fox “spent weeks downplaying the virus and comparing it to the seasonal flu” last year and now should “consider taking a look at the dangerous info they put out…”:

CNN’s @oliverdarcy covers the explosive revelations from Fauci’s emails: pic.twitter.com/qA7eT3FOvM

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 4, 2021

The big problem here is that if you’re going to trash Fox News for supposedly “downplaying” the Wuhan coronavirus during the first three months of 2020, you might wanna make sure you don’t have those skeletons in your closet:

Anderson Cooper also said it was less dangerous than the flu. https://t.co/yzLe5QKI1D

— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) June 4, 2021

And not only did Anderson Cooper downplay it, so did several other CNN anchors and “experts” – as did those at MSNBC and elsewhere:

I count three other CNN anchors saying the same in this compilation. The line was standard for a while.https://t.co/4AknogNCgV

— Aelfred The Great (@aelfred_D) June 4, 2021

Beyond that, putting conditions on and whining about in-depth coverage of a critical issue like what Fauci might have known and when he may have known about the possibility that the coronavirus was leaked from a Wuhan, China virology lab seems to go against all the virtue-signaling CNN did last year about how the American people deserved better than the supposed “misinformation” that the network claimed was coming from Fox News and other right-leaning news outlets, doesn’t it?

It’s deeply problematic that CNN is still trying to put conditions and limitations on how the issue should be covered, even now after all this time.

The American people do indeed deserve to know the truth about this virus and its origins for numerous reasons, and the best way to do that is to raise the issue and to ask questions, which is all people who were mocked over it last year by the media were trying to do. And yet at every turn, Democrats and the press including “journalists” at CNN tried to suppress the debate and mocked people who dared to bring it up during interviews.

Maybe in the event of the next public health crisis, CNN will act like a legitimate news network for a change, and instead of trying to stifle the questions people ask they’ll do some of the asking themselves which, ya know, is what actual reporters are supposed to do.

Oh, wait. Who am I kidding? We all know that will never, ever happen, because CNN is not a news organization.

Flashback: In Which Oliver Darcy’s Fox News Hypocrisy Accidentally Gets Exposed by … CNN’s Oliver Darcy