Researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China (Image: AP)

Containing a rising China unites the global right in search of a narrative that boosts its particularly bombastic form of jingoism while providing an opportunity to point the finger over COVID-19,

Who can resist, then, the shocking story of the leaky Wuhan lab, an alluring conspiracy theory that feeds both needs? No surprise that the conservative media ecosystem is eager to send its talking points pinballing along their global distribution pipeline built for this purpose.

It’s a story that’s long been bubbling away on social media. This month, The Australian lent it the credibility of traditional media, with highlights from the forthcoming book from Australia’s own Walkley Award-winning reporter Sharri Markson, What Really Happened in Wuhan? The story exploded in a very predictable kind of way, across the Murdoch network (“bombshell documents” said The Sun) through Fox News in the US and on to a special Markson interview on Steve Bannon’s podcast War Room Pandemic.

It got particular traction in India, where the pro-Modi media was eager to embrace the “bioweapon” theory as a defence against the government’s mishandling of the country’s collapsing health system.

The story has been bubbling away, stirring up anti-China animus (and anti-Chinese racism) for more than a year. The reports from her book (to be published by News Corp subsidiary HarperCollins in September) followed on from Markson’s “world exclusive” reported in News Corp’s Australian tabloids in May last year. Tagged “The Covid Files”, the reports were based on an alleged secret Five Eyes document.

“China’s batty science” The Daily Telegraph yelled in all-caps at the time, with the added kicker: “Bombshell dossier lays out the cast against the People’s Republic.”

It followed up with “Bat man” a few days later based on a tenuous Australian link from a scientist who had worked both in Australia and in the Wuhan lab.

After the “evidence” for the theory was effectively punctured in the Nine mastheads and mocked on the ABC’s Media Watch, Markson’s local Sky colleague, Chris Kenny, gave the story its necessary culture wars twist, with an attack on ABC activists “determined to undermine” her investigative journalism.

This morning it bounced back to where it started. The Australian’s media diarist Nick Tabakoff claimed victory over Nine, citing an article by Matthew Knott in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. Knott, the papers’ US correspondent, wrote a “just in case” speculative back-covering article largely based on musings from former New York Times science and health reporter Donald McNeil (who was forced into retirement earlier this year in a “cancel culture” furore over alleged inappropriate language, which he denies).

It tells a lot about how the conservative narrative spreads:

  • Step 1: Find enough evidence to shape a story to fit one of the big agendas of the right — in this case, China!
  • Step 2: Turn the reporting into an event that generates repeat content across platforms
  • Step 3: When fact-checked, culture wars!

The journey of this particular story is a reminder that News Corp’s Australian arm is as much a giver as a taker of content for the global right’s echo chamber. Sky after dark, for example, amplifies the US right, with reports adapted from its sister broadcaster, Fox News, or from other right-wing media like Daily Caller. (In a reversal of this month’s Wuhan interview, Markson had Bannon on her own Fox show last year to discuss the US election.)

Packaged onto YouTube, these feed back into the US, providing a sort of “independent” validation of the original claims. All of them — reports and reports of reports — ricochet around the transcontinental social media platforms for days after, generating enough outrage to power their own political cryptocurrency.

This worldwide integration manufactures a relatively consistent conservative line, at least across the Anglosphere of the UK, Australia and the US, where News Corp and Fox operate. This line may be the chatter about day-to-day political considerations (why, here’s more evidence that Biden is in cognitive decline), or it may be about building up global villains (Hello, Prince Harry!), or it may be the twists and turns of climate change denial in response to, well, facts.

For the time being, it looks like News Corp and Fox have reasserted their central position within this right-wing media, having weathered the post-US election storm where they appeared out of step with their audience and under challenge from more Trumpian voices such as Newsmax or OANN.

This past week, Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch turned it into a virtue, telling Business Insider from Sydney that it proves the US network’s centrist independence. We didn’t bend to Trump, he said. Maybe.