With U.S. media companies in thrall of ad-clicks, news consumers don’t know where to turn anymore.

Last week, Congress quietly but firmly shut the door on future funding for the Wuhan biolab located- perhaps not coincidentally- at the epicenter of the COVID19 outbreak.

But this blockbuster news flash didn’t come courtesy of CNN, MSNBC, FOX News or even Twitter. Most people never heard about it all.

“At the end of title V,” instructed an official Congressional document titled, “Amendments to the Labor, Health and Human Services, Educations, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill FY2023” on June 30, 2022, “insert the following on the very first page:”

“Sec__. None of the funds made available by this Act may be made available to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or any other laboratory located in a country determined by the Secretary of State to be a foreign adversary, including China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran.”

The idea that COVID19 could have leaked from the Wuhan virology laboratory has gained traction over the last year in particular.

First, behind-the-scenes mechanizations to suppress the theory from public discussion were exposed in the mainstream press. Next, Chinese Communist Party officials made themselves appear increasingly guilty by refusing to admit the international scientific community- and virologists frantically searching for the origin, and in effect, the cure for COVID19- into Wuhan.

Often, it isn’t the crime that gets you caught; it’s the cover-up.

With more and more people in the scientific community now willing to openly admit the possibility, the lab leak theory has gradually become socially acceptable to discuss and even those on the left have begun admitting a possibility they’d long dismissed as a conservative conspiracy theory.

Two new developments, viewed through official channels rather than through the jaundiced lens of the corporate media, add even more credibility to the lab leak theory: This U.S. amendment and a recently launched WHO probe into COVID19’s origins in Wuhan based on, “new evidence.”

What this new evidence might be, we don’t yet know. What the story of the lab leak theory means for the U.S. media machine is clear: This is one of the many reasons U.S. consumers rate America’s news networks the most untrustworthy in the world.

Media pundits, journalists, big tech companies, and private corporations took extraordinary steps to censor the “Lab Leak Theory” from social media and the internet. With those efforts proven wrong, even manipulated, many are left wondering what else media managers and censorious social media companies may inadvertently be pushing- or leaving out- in error.

For U.S. media consumers looking across the landscape of the most untrusted news companies in the world, it’s becoming increasingly hard to know what- or who- to believe.

Luckily, for freelance social media political analysts and news junkies everywhere, there is a rich source of unvarnished information hanging low on the vine.

Anyone who wants to follow the money, that is, how U.S. lawmakers are spending your tax dollars, can find this information, in the bland jargon and legalese written by U.S. lawmakers themselves.

Documents like this are filled with exactly the types of raw, unvarnished information many media consumers crave in a landscape dominated by click-bait and advertisers.

This particular amendment includes everything from, “Psychedelic Research,” to the, “Maintenance of Chimpanzees on US Air Force Bases. — When Congress passed the CHIMP Act, it intended for all chimpanzees owned by NIH to be retired to an animal sanctuary.”

The amendment includes very important items like, “Fentanyl Awareness Education. — The Committee notes that the SUBG may be used to develop educational materials related to the dangers of fentanyl, including the lethalness of small quantities,” and, “Domestic Manufacturing. — The Committee recognizes the importance of ensuring a robust U.S. manufacturing base and domestic supply chain to support Federal health programs.”

“Therefore, the Committee urges CMS to develop and implement a pilot or demonstration program to identify innovative payment and reimbursement policies within Federal health care programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP, to support the utilization of U.S. manufactured generic and biosimilar medications to ensure increased access and utilization of life-saving and life-changing drugs,” should be music to the ears of American manufacturing concerns.

“Preschool Development Grants,” and, “ongoing support for a national child abuse hotline to provide resources and intervention in all modalities, including chat, text, and call, to provide comprehensive capabilities to serve both youth and concerned adults facing child abuse and neglect,” are referenced in the amendment, as are allocations for, “Combatting Violence Against Women,” like a, “Breastfeeding Analysis,” and, “Trafficking Prevention Activities.”

With so many legacy media outlets having gone the way of tabloid journalism in a cynical play for currency in the attention economy, news consumers may need to go a little further afield for answers about what’s really going on.

Congressional records are an excellent place to start.

(contributing writer, Brooke Bell)