Sinclair Broadcast Group is delaying airing an interview with a conspiracy theorist who baselessly claims Dr Fauci created the coronavirus

• Sinclair Broadcast Group is to delay airing an interview with conspiracy theorist Judy Mikovits. She claims the scientific establishment manufactured the coronavirus crisis as part of a sinister plot.
• In the interview, she alleges that Dr Anthony Fauci, the White House coronavirus advisor, created the disease.
• Critics had claimed that the pro-Trump network was lending credibility to Mikovits' baseless claims by giving her a platform to spread her views.
• Sinclair said it is delaying broadcasting the interview until it had added further material providing context to Mikovits' claims

Sinclair Broadcast Group is to delay screening an interview with a conspiracy theorist who claims that Dr Anthony Fauci created the coronavirus.

On Sunday, July 26, the network planned to broadcast an interview with Dr Judy Mikovits, who has claimed in viral a video, entitled Plandemic, that scientific elites created the coronavirus as part of a sinister plot to boost vaccination rates.

The film is riddled with unsubstantiated claims and accusations. Several social media sites banned the video after it went viral, for violating rules against spreading coronavirus misinformation.

She claims in the interview Sinclair was set to screen Sunday that Dr Anthony Fauci, the top infectious diseases expert on the White House coronavirus task force, manufactured the virus and sent it to China, from where it began to spread across the world.

Mikovits and her attorney, Larry Klayman, were scheduled to appear on this week's episode of American This Week, which is helmed by former Fox News host Eric Bolling. The episode was posted online before its scheduled broadcast.

In a statement posted on Twitter Saturday, the media company said it was delaying airing the interview until it had added additional context to the section about Mikovits and her claims.

"All stations have been notified not to air this and will instead be re-airing last week's episode in its place," reads the statement.

It added that there were no plans to broadcast Plandemic: "This documentary has been widely discredited and we as a company do not support the baseless claims that were rebutted during the original segment.

"Further, we valiantly support Dr. Fauci and the work he and his team are doing to further prevent the spread of COVID-19 and are proud to have welcomed him to 'America This Week' as well as our stations via our national bureau to update and inform viewers."

In recent years the Sinclair group, which owns hundreds of local news stations across the US, has tilted towards support for Trump with anchors reading out near-identical statements in 2018 in which they echoed Trump's attacks on "fake news."

Fauci, whose remarks on the coronavirus have at times clashed with Trump's, described, in an interview with the Axe Files podcast last week, how he and his family had been assigned security after receiving serious threats of violence.