Why has the Mainstream Media suddenly reversed course, now admitting virus might have been modified in Chinese lab?

I totally LOVE watching how the Establishment--the gatekeepers, the ones who decide what most Americans will get to see pushed as "fact"--reacts when their Narrative starts taking hits.  Here's the start of an "opinion" piece in the Wall Street Journal two days ago, about the "new" idea that the China virus may have been modified in a government lab in Wuhan to make it infect people. 

The possibility that the pandemic began with an escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is attracting fresh attention. President Biden has asked the national intelligence community to redouble efforts to investigate.

Ah yes!  "President" Biden has asked...ooooh, the "national intel community" to "redouble efforts to investigate," eh?   If you believe that crap I can make you a great deal on some oceanfront property in Omaha.  So the authors are doing a "fallback," but still pushing the bullshit that Biden* really wants to investigate the communist Chinese government that's given his son tens of millions of dollars in "equity" in their $1.5 BILLION investment fund.  Right.

Much of the public discussion has focused on circumstantial evidence: mysterious illnesses in late 2019; the lab’s work intentionally supercharging viruses to increase lethality (known as “gain of function” research).  The Chinese Communist Party has been reluctant to release relevant information. Reports based on U.S. intelligence have suggested the lab collaborated on projects with the Chinese military.

"Reluctant to release relevant information," eh?  Wow, you don't say!  I'm amazed the authors didn't say "slightly reluctant," or perhaps "have signaled their eagerness to cooperate but have been slowed by low-level bureaucrats" or some equally horseshit tale.  Gotta protect the Chinese communist party.

But eventually the authors do get to the smoking gun:

But the most compelling reason to favor the lab leak hypothesis is firmly based in science. In particular, consider the genetic fingerprint of CoV-2, the novel coronavirus responsible for the disease Covid-19. 

In gain-of-function research, a microbiologist can increase the lethality of a coronavirus enormously by splicing a special sequence into its genome at a prime location. Doing this leaves no trace of manipulation. But it alters the virus spike protein, rendering it easier for the virus to inject genetic material into the victim cell. Since 1992 there have been at least 11 separate experiments adding a special sequence to the same location. The end result has always been supercharged viruses. 

Here's the hoot:  The 11 experiments they mention were written up in scientific papers, published or presented in symposia by the Chinese.  They were available on-line, all along.  I've read a few, and you couldn't ask for a more open admission that they were indeed splicing genetic material into the original bat coronavirus to make it do...um..."new things."

For those who've been working too hard to pay attention, that's called "gain of function research," partly funded by...wait for it...the division of NIH headed--for a staggering 37 years!--by the notoriously corrupt Tony Fauci.

Now here's the poser:  What prompted the Mainstream Media to finally admit that the critics of The Narrative (that the virus could not possibly have been modified in a Chinese lab) had probably been right all along?  After all, 99 percent of Americans don't have the background to understand what splicing genes into a virus is actually about, so the Media could have ridden this out without admitting what many researchers had been claiming for a year:  that the virus was modified in the Wuhan lab.  So why did the Media fold now? 

If you think the Media is simply being honest, you're naive.

The media is re-shaping The Narrative, because something's happened that the Establishment didn't expect.  One possibility is that a high-ranking Chinese national has defected, and is being debriefed by an obscure U.S. intel agency called the DIA.

Wait...how would an obscure agency like the DIA get a high-ranking defector instead of the giant CIA or FBI, eh?  That just seems un-possible, citizen!  I mean, if someone really defected, both the CIA and FBI would know about it, right?

Ah, I see the public-relations people have done their jobs well.  More later.

Source.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-science-suggests-a-wuhan-lab-leak-11622995184