Indeed. “Thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory” was how the lab leak was described earlier this year by the media.

Yeah, I'm always curious about this -- what would a good recommendation be to get a broad base of news while also relying on credible information?

E.g. I want to know the different reasonable perspectives on issues/events without entertaining every kooky idea. In this case, I feel like I lumped what seems a plausible concern in with kooky ideas, and so missed the entire non-kooky narrative.

It helps to be up to date with what the kooks think. Majority of conspiracy theories start with a factually-correct, compelling premise and only then go overboard with speculation.

You should stop outsourcing credibility evaluation to others and see what you think of the kooks. The kooks called the coronavirus sooo much better than everyone else, from the jump.

You'll get a lot more "noise", sure, but the signal you do get can be incredibly useful. You learn to place less trust on any individual thing you hear, and get a better bullshit detector as you go. It's well worthwhile, and you'll be surprisingly well informed all without some large entity telling you "what's really happening".

You've mischaracterized what I meant. When I was reading the Intercept article, and it first started talking about EcoHealth and Daszak, the names were familiar but I couldn't remember where I heard them, so I searched and found the Wikipedia article on him, and it was then that I was like "Oh yeah, it's this guy." It's not like some news sources were keeping this information from me.

Good call out; People should re-evaluate their sources. I had a similar epiphany 10 years ago, since then I'veve expanded my sources considerably, and if it's something I am interested in, then I will look for at least one counter view point