David Morens pleads guilty to concealing COVID-19 records from US government

Questions about this coverage

How did the left and right cover David Morens pleads guilty to concealing COVID-19 records from US…?

Of the 9 outlets on this story carrying a published leaning rating, 11% are rated left, 33% are rated centre, 56% are rated right. Those percentages are shares of the rated outlets, not of every outlet that ran it, which was 11. The sections above set out what each side emphasised, in its own terms.

Is David Morens pleads guilty to concealing COVID-19 records from US… left or right?

Too few of the outlets on this story carry a published leaning rating to say. 9 of them do, and this site does not characterise a field under 12: at that size one newsroom filing moves the share by ten points. The percentages above are the count as it stands.

Is the coverage of David Morens pleads guilty to concealing COVID-19 records from US… biased?

David Morens pleads guilty to concealing COVID-19 records from US government is one event reported by 11 outlets, and this page does not rate the story as biased or unbiased. What it publishes is the spread: which outlets ran it, where named rating organisations place each of them on the spectrum, and what each side chose to lead with. A leaning rating describes an outlet's record over time, not this article, and the two should not be run together.

Which side is not reporting David Morens pleads guilty to concealing COVID-19 records from US…?

When we first saw this story, outlets rated left had barely covered it. Coverage accretes for hours after an event, so that is where to look rather than a verdict — the split above is the current count, and it is the one to read.

Which outlets covered David Morens pleads guilty to concealing COVID-19 records from US…?

11 that we know of, every one of them listed further up this page with a link to its own report and to what we hold on the publisher. Nothing here is a summary of somebody else's summary: the outlets are named so the original reporting can be read.

What did David Morens plead guilty to?

David Morens pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit offences and defraud the United States. The charge relates to efforts to conceal federal records about COVID-19 by using a personal email account to evade public records laws. He faces up to five years in prison.

Was Anthony Fauci accused of wrongdoing in this case?

No, Anthony Fauci was not accused of wrongdoing in the case. The Washington Post’s digest noted this explicitly, though other outlets did not mention it. Fauci has faced congressional scrutiny over his handling of the pandemic and its origins.

What was the research grant linked to the case?

The case involves a 2014 grant called “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” awarded to a New York nonprofit. The Wuhan Institute of Virology in China later received a subaward under the grant. The NIH terminated the grant in April 2020 amid allegations about COVID-19’s origins.

Did any outlets report on the illegal gratuities Morens received?

No, none of the digests from the left, centre or right mentioned the illegal gratuities Morens admitted receiving, including two bottles of wine from a co-conspirator. The full report from Internewscast carried the detail, but it was omitted in all digests.