It’s been a long, strange few months.

First, let me say that I hope you and your family and friends have remained safe and healthy.

Second, I want to say this: If this pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that our corporate-controlled industrial food system is a failure—and that we’ll never have a better opportunity for transformational change than we have right now.

Like so many organizations and individuals, we are deeply concerned about our financial future. If you are able, could you help us reach our 2nd-quarter fundraising goal by making a donation today?

In an interview conducted on May 21, 2020, Pat Thomas and Sam Husseini discuss the mainstream media’s coverage of the COVID-19 crisis, including the reluctance to explore all reasonable possibilities. Husseini is a writer, journalist and communications director at The Institute for Public Accuracy.

PT: Welcome back everyone. We’re live on Facebook here at the Organic Consumers Association. I'm Pat Thomas. I'm still talking about the coronavirus, but today, from a slightly different perspective. We spent some time over the last couple of weeks looking at the origins of the coronavirus. Several of the scientists we've spoken to have expressed frustration with the reluctance of mainstream media to delve more deeply into credible possibilities, such an as an overspill from a lab.

It's a frustration that a lot of us share, which is why today we are asking: Is the media getting its response wrong? And when you start looking into that question, it becomes quickly apparent that it is every bit as complex as the scientific response to the coronavirus, and also that the two are interlinked.

In the COVID-19-driven time warp of the past 90 days, politics, economics and public opinion have changed drastically.  Important aspects of social behavior seem to have improved—less non-essential travel, less consumption, more family focus, reduced greenhouse gas pollution (17 percent less worldwide in early April), increase in demand for healthy, home-cooked foods, appreciation for nature, mutual aid, social solidarity and more attention paid to the plight of farmworkers, small farmers, healthcare workers and food chain workers.

Unfortunately, other impacts of the pandemic are quite negative, in fact catastrophic: massive infections and deaths, widespread anxiety and fear, extreme political polarization and economic meltdown, including a massive number of bankruptcies of small businesses, with 40 million workers unemployed in the U.S. alone.