Wyoming’s news outlets helped push incomplete information and withheld the full picture about the Covid-19 virus, masks, vaccines, and other aspects of the pandemic, accelerating declining trust in journalism.
They did this in two ways. First, they accepted as true and happily parroted much of what mainstream public health officials and scientists said about the pandemic. They rarely expressed skepticism of the dominant narrative. Second, they closed their pages—virtual or otherwise—to contrary perspectives, denying readers the chance to learn that countless scientists were skeptical of what was over zealously declared “The Science.”
To this day, Wyoming news outlets, including Wyoming Public Media, Wyoming Public Radio, Cowboy State Daily, the Casper Star-Tribune, Oil City News, the Gillette News Record, and others, remain unwilling to acknowledge the role they played in promoting a false, one-sided narrative.
In traditional journalism, when a publication prints something false, misleading, or materially inaccurate, the ethical response is to issue a retraction or at least ensuring a full and complete record and representation of all the data. A retraction is essentially an admission that the outlet got it wrong—it acknowledges the mistake, corrects and or completes the record, and apologizes to readers for spreading misinformation. Retractions are a vital safeguard of journalistic credibility, used whenever the public has been misled.
That safeguard was conspicuously absent in Wyoming’s media coverage of Covid-19. Despite publishing (and often doubling down on) claims that have since proven to be false or at least highly contested, these outlets have not offered retractions, meaningful corrections or ensured a complete discussion with all scientific evidence. By refusing to apply the same standards of accountability they would demand from others, they have left readers with a distorted historical record of the pandemic.
Let’s examine a few of the biggest myths Wyoming outlets helped sell to an arguably fear-mongered public.
Myth #1: Masks work to decrease transmission
Masks became one of the most visible symptoms of corrupted public health guidance. Everyone, even young children, was told to mask up. Wyoming’s outlets dutifully worked to enforce the directive.
In October 2020, Oil City News ran a story that treated mask effectiveness as settled fact: “Hospital officials have reiterated that masks are effective when used properly,” the article declared. Yet even then, there were already serious and well-documented reasons to question the evidence for widespread mask use.
Rather than presenting that debate, Oil City News simply leaned on vague references to “hospital officials,” giving its call for masking the veneer of authority while withholding crucial context from its readers.
Other Wyoming outlets reported the same, often selectively choosing quotes from medical experts to present a one-sided narrative. WyoFile wrote, “Masks are one of many tools that can help slow the spread of the virus.
Cowboy State Daily wrote that Alexia Harrist, the state’s highest health officer in 2020, “urged caution moving forward, noting that wearing face coverings and continuing to social distance will likely be a part of everyone’s lives for the foreseeable future, at least until a vaccine or treatment for the virus is created.”
The argument for masking healthy individuals was always questionable. Early in the pandemic, public health organizations like the CDC and the World Health Organization (WHO) discouraged people from wearing masks. Scientific studies at the time did not support the conclusion that masks, especially cloth masks, could reduce the transmission of viruses.
The best and most current studies now tell us what so many knew or long suspected: masks do little to nothing to prevent the transmission of COVID-19.
Myth #2: COVID-19 emerged from the wild
Everyone agrees COVID-19 infected its first victims in Wuhan, a city in central China, in late 2019. But what else was going on in Wuhan at the time?
It turns out that Wuhan is home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a lab conducting U.S.-funded gain-of-function research—modifying viruses to make them more deadly—on bat coronaviruses. The Institute is located just seven miles from the market where COVID-19 first jumped to humans.
Quite a coincidence—or is it?
At the beginning of the pandemic, scientists and public health officials disagreed about the origins of COVID-19. Did it come from a lab? Or did it jump from infected animals? The evidence for either explanation was, at the time, insufficient to form a firm conclusion.
Did Wyoming’s news outlets adopt a neutral stance and carefully guide readers through the competing theories, allowing them to form their own opinions? You know they did not.
In Fall 2021, WyoFile made it clear which theory they supported: “Conspiracy theorists have speculated that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab and was either accidentally or deliberately released into the public.” In using the disparaging phrase “conspiracy theorists,” WyoFile communicated to its readers that essentially only people in tin hats would believe the COVID-19 virus could have escaped from a nearby virus laboratory.
By 2022, mounting evidence pointed to the likelihood that the virus originated in a nearby laboratory. Yet the Casper Star-Tribune republished an Associated Press story claiming: “Scientists conclude that the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, likely spilled from animals into people two separate times.”
In reality, no such consensus among scientists existed.
Many scientists weighed the evidence and came to the opposite conclusion. The press routinely vilified and slandered them as conspiracy theorists and racists. We now know the evidence for the lab-leak hypothesis is nearly overwhelming.
Myth #3: mRNA vaccines are safe and everyone should get one—repeatedly!
When the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were first rolled out, the Biden administration, public health agencies, and major media outlets launched a full-court press to convince the public to comply. President Biden even attempted an unprecedented mandate forcing businesses with more than 100 employees to enforce vaccination—a move the U.S. Supreme Court later struck down.
Wyoming’s media outlets eagerly echoed this narrative, repeating the claim—falsely or incomplete information—that the vaccines were unquestionably safe.
In early 2021the Gillette News Record published an article titled, “Q&A: Common COVID-19 vaccine questions answered,” admonishing readers to set aside their concerns and get vaccinated as quickly as possible. The article states that “technology has been around close to 10 years, with this being the first chance to use it quickly and effectively.” Around the same time, WyoFile reported a doctor saying, “The vaccine isn’t just something that was slapped together too quickly, as some have argued.”
Thanks to a recent report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, we know the vaccine was, indeed, slapped together, and that the Biden administration purposely suppressed evidence that it increased the risks of certain heart conditions (myocarditis and pericarditis). And yet, those who made the perfectly reasonable decision to refrain from taking an experimental medication developed on the fly were bullied, harassed, and terminated from their jobs.
Shortly after the vaccines became widely available, the Biden administration began to aggressively pressure people to receive booster shots. Cowboy State Daily published a story that might as well have been a paid advertisement for Pfizer and other pharmaceutical companies. “Wyoming Dept Of Health Says More People Should Get COVID Booster Shots,” reads the fearless headline.
Trust the experts?
In July 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Wyoming Public Media published an article attempting to explain why some Wyomingites resisted health protocols like mask-wearing. The piece, titled “Why We Don’t Trust Science,” quoted “science communication expert” Professor Kaatie Cooper, who claimed: “I think that a lot of the rejection of expert recommendations about things like mask-wearing and social distancing really comes down to fear and a resistance to uncertainty.”
Missing from Professor Cooper’s patronizing analysis was any acknowledgment that so-called experts might be wrong. We now know that much of what public health authorities and the media packaged as unquestionable truth during the pandemic was, in fact, false or far less than complete—and in some cases, deliberately misleading as failing to give complete information.
The pandemic ushered in a dark chapter in American history, one marked by stay-at-home orders, mask mandates, vaccine requirements, and other heavy-handed policies. None of it would have been possible without the eager cooperation of outlets such as Wyoming Public Media, WyoFile, Cowboy State Daily, the Casper Star-Tribune, Oil City News, the Gillette News Record, and others.
Until these outlets come clean about their role in spreading pandemic myths, they do not deserve your trust—or your support.
This article represents the opinion of the sponsor and is based upon published research and findings expressing opposing views and facts not published in Wyoming media outlets on Covid and vaccinations.