But there were still propaganda efforts, especially for the topic of mis- or disinformation. It served as an excuse to curb content. Trump decried the press, but at the same time he was correct in that the media tried to smear him with a Russian collusion story and promoted and suppress certain other topics. This isn't about conservative vs democrat, this is just underhanded political play. So the worst part is that he was partially correct about the press being instrumentalized. If they just reported critically and honestly, he would never have had an argument here.

Another bad result from this is that this of course might strain the relationship of a country being accused to meddle in elections. It turned large parts of the domestic populations against an imaginary enemy. Not saying that this is relevant for current developments.

You could maybe excuse the press because they have been fed with false info. Checking sources is their job, but worst of all, is that they now claim that voices need to be censored because of misinformation, just as they spread it themselves. I doubt they mean their own and I can fully understand the lacking trust in large press companies.

I don’t really care about the ideology; my point is that it was wrongfully suppressed.

> That was a politicaly insensitive take to have that lead to asian hate and violence at the time.

Is there literally any evidence of this at all? The virus originated from China either way, and if anything, it’s less offensive to blame a mistake at a virology lab rather than the general sanitation level of Chinese wet markets.

The lab leak theory was politically insensitive to the people who backed research at that specific lab. That’s it.

Another example is the leaked contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which have since been confirmed to be authentic. Censored as “disinformation/misinformation” at the time, turned out to be completely true, and again, censored because it was embarrassing to specific powerful individuals.