Protection, censorship, abdication, sorry display of US journalism
First word
THE US election c am - paign, which is now down to its final week before the balloting, is showing how American media readily throw out the window journalistic ethics whenever it suits their politics.
Media critics are exposing the transgressions in such a sharp light that we should never again allow US media to hector us on the practice of journalism and the treatment of cases such as Maria Ressa and the ABS-CBN franchise.
Over the past week, we have been shown how US journalism: 1) runs protection (like the mafia) for Joe Biden’s campaign to blunt all criticism of the former vice president; 2) exercises censorship to prevent stories such as the NewYorkPost exposé on the Hunter Biden emails from being published or broadcast; 3) abdicates the duty of reporting and analyzing stories and events critical to American public life; and 5) go to bat for Joe Biden immediately after the final debate yesterday.
Running protection for Joe Biden
It was NewYorkPost columnist Miranda Devine who bluntly recalled the mafia in a column on the media’s treatment of the Post expose on Hunter Biden hard drive, which linked Joe Biden to his son Hunter’s business deals in Ukraine and China. She wrote:
“It wasn’t till Friday at the Detroit airport that the former vice president briefly stopped for questions and CBS reporter Bo Erickson asked about the damning emails found on Hunter’s laptop, which was abandoned last April at a Mac repair shop.
“I have no response,” snapped Joe. “Another smear campaign. Right up your alley.”
But for some in the media, Erickson was at fault for asking the question.
“Bo, this is your news director,” replied Steve Holzer, a UCLA journalism instructor and news director who has worked at CBS in the past. “The right question is, what do you think of the report that Rudy Giuliani used Russian disinformation to try to smear your family 19 days before an election?”
That tweet tells you everything about the dishonest response to the Post’s story from much of the establishment media.
Russian disinformation? This is how the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, etc., run protection for the Biden campaign. They have ignored or maligned our stories, and claimed the emails were ‘hacked’.”
Media censorship of Biden story
Chriss Fareell wrote an article for Judicial Watch on October 22, on how censorship was exercised in the media to prevent the Post expose from reaching the public. He wrote:
“The destruction of journalistic ethics is nearly complete. The same group of reporters and pundits who rushed to report every rumor, every speculation, every lie about Donald Trump for the last four years now close ranks and refuse to report the emerging allegations about the Biden family.
“Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptops have been a treasure trove of inside information about his reported influence peddling and shady deals, based entirely on his status as son of the vice president. It is obvious that Joe Biden supported his son’s dealings, and it may also be the case that the ‘big guy’ directly profited from them. And it is now beyond question that Joe Biden used the power of his office to bully Ukraine to end an investigation into corruption at the energy firm Burisma, where his son inexplicably was a board member…
“The Biden campaign has not denied that the laptop and its contents are genuine, which they would have done quickly had it been bogus. And former Hunter Biden associate Bevan Cooney has given access to 26,000 additional emails that reportedly substantiate what has been released. You would think that other reporters and news outlets would be clamoring for access to the rest of the information. Isn’t that what credible journalists do, ferret out the facts, without fear or favor?
“But not anymore. Adherence to the liberal narrative has replaced the old norm of objectivity. Fear and favor are the order of the day. The only fact that matters is that the ‘laptop from
Hell,’ as President Trump called it, could be fatal to the Biden campaign. Thus, the story must be dismissed, censored, criticized and made to go away. Quickly…
“Then there are the tech titans who are doing their best to make sure the story does not spread. Twitter has suspended the New York Post ’ s account because of the story and locked the Trump campaign’s account over a Hunter Biden- related video. But Twitter reflects a very rarefied ultra- liberal slice of the electorate anyway, so does it really matter? Facebook has reduced distribution of the story, and many major newspapers and cable channels are ignoring it. Forget the idea that reporters would pressure the Biden campaign to give substantive answers to any questions regarding this scandal. The only tough question Biden has been asked recently was what flavor milkshake he bought.”
Media’s shameful abdication
The National Review in an editorial on October 22 described media’s failing as an abdication of duty. It wrote:
“In an interview with National Public Radio’s public editor today, Terence Samuel, managing editor for news, explained why readers haven’t seen any stories about the NewYorkPost’s Hunter Biden email scoop.
“‘ We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,’ Samuel reasoned. ‘ And quite frankly, that’s where we ended up, this was… a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way.’
“Samuel, sadly, speaks for much of the media, which has ignored or dismissed the emails out of hand.
“Samuel fails to explain what journalistic standards he employs to ascertain what does and doesn’t constitute a ‘waste of time.’ The NewYorkPost’s reporting, after all, has now been corroborated by an on-the record source, Tony Bobulinski, a former Hunter Biden business partner and Navy veteran. The emails that Bobulinski says are ‘genuine”’purport to detail a business arrangement in which the Biden family ‘aggressively leveraged the Biden family name to make millions’ from foreign entities. “How is that ‘not really a story?’ “There is more and more reason to credit the veracity of those emails, or at a minimum, suggest that they warrant more thorough investigation. We have what appears to be a signed receipt from the computer repair shop in Delaware, demonstrating that Hunter’s laptop and hard drive were obtained legally. We know that the laptop in question is being held in connection to an FBI moneylaundering investigation. The director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, says that the emails in questions aren’t part of a Russian disinformation campaign and the FBI hasn’t contradicted him.
“Yet, the managing editor of one of the nation’s largest publicly funded media organization believes emails possibly implicating a presidential frontrunner in having benefited from deals involving his shady son who was leveraging the family name and proximity to power for millions are nothing but a distraction…
“Of course, National Public Radio is free to cover whatever news it deems important. But if it runs interference for the preferred presidential candidate of the editors, it should do so without the $ 250 million provided by taxpayers every year…
“Taxpayers have every right to expect organizations such as NPR to hold the powerful accountable without partisan favor — and that goes for both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.”