Vox caught stealth editing an old article from March 2020 “debunking” the lab origin of COVID-19

Vox, a left-leaning website, has been caught stealth editing an old article from March 2020 “debunking” the lab origin of COVID following numerous prominent officials now saying the lab origin is a distinct possibility. The stealth edit was first reported on Twitter by Paul Graham, a tech investor and co-founder of startup accelerator Y Combinator.

To our readers who may not know Vox, it is one of the sites used by Facebook and other fact-checking websites to verify the accuracy of news reported by other websites.

Graham said: “Some of the stealth edits that Vox made to its article debunking “conspiracy theories” that Covid-19 originated in a lab leak between its original publication in March 2020 and now.”

The edits made by Vox include changes to 6 entries in the write-up. Vox also removed words that the virus definitively did “not come from the Wuhan lab” and saying that the fact the virus emerged in the same city in which the lab is located “appears to be a pure coincidence” rather than the previously more definitive “is pure coincidence.” Vox also changed the word “is” to “appear to be.”

In a tweet this evening, Graham said:

“Some of the stealth edits that Vox made to its article debunking “conspiracy theories” that Covid-19 originated in a lab leak between its original publication in March 2020 and now.”

Some of the stealth edits that Vox made to its article debunking "conspiracy theories" that Covid-19 originated in a lab leak between its original publication in March 2020 and now. pic.twitter.com/RYxZ2B81mc

— Paul Graham (@paulg) May 24, 2021

May 24, 2021 Updates: Below is Vox Editor’s note released today.

Below are screenshots of the edits made by Vox.

Below are screenshots from Vox’s 2020 articles.

June 4, 2021 Update: Vox was founded in April 2014 by Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Melissa Bell. Prior to founding Vox, Ezra Klein was a former Washington Post columnist where he worked as the head of Wonkblog, a public policy blog. Vox is run by Vox Media, a digital publishing network founded by Jerome Armstrong, Tyler Bleszinski, and Markos Moulitsas.

According to its website, Vox Media’s portfolio includes 13 other brands: Vox, New York Magazine, The Verge, The Cut, Eater, Vulture, The Strategist, Polygon, SB Nation, Intelligencer, Curbed, Grub Street, and Recode.