The story at the bottom of the page is required reading for anyone retaining illusions that all media strives for free and fair reporting. At a critical point in the 2020 US Election, instead of acting as Democracy’s bulwark in the Court of Public Opinion, news organisations chose a side. The wrong one. Not just in the US.
When the New York Post published its expose’ on incriminating documents found on Hunter Biden‘s abandoned computer, the US media establishment – led by The New York Times – wrote it off as fake news. Twitter even blocked the Post’s account for two weeks. Now, 18 months later, all have quietly recanted.
At BizNews, the story reminded us of SA’s Gupta Leaks, where explosive information was extracted from an abandoned computer. BizNews satirist SLR devoted a column to the subject and we republished coverage by the WSJ. Elsewhere, the media’s distaste of the incumbent, trumped its ethics.
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Two other things shocked me about reactions to our approach. First, despite Hunter’s local connection (his wife is from Cape Town) SA media all swallowed Biden’s “fake news” line. Second, as a direct result of this, some long-time BizNews supporters cancelled subscriptions and made sure I knew why. Slips are showing. Not just on this topic.
More for you to read today:
- Chinaâs Big Tech Firms Are Axing Thousands of Workers. Tencent, Alibaba and Didi are among companies in the process of slashing jobs this year as they face economic and regulatory headwinds
- Elon Muskâs Business Ties to China Create Unease in Washington. Tesla, SpaceX are at the centre of discussions; some lawmakers fear Beijing could access secrets as âCongress doesnât have good eyes on thisâ
- Russia, Failing to Achieve Early Victory in Ukraine, Is Seen Shifting to âPlan Bâ, a Siege. Tactical shift seeks to pressure Ukraine into accepting neutrality and Russian territorial claims, U.S. officials say. (see video above)
- US Stocks End Lower Monday After Powell Interest-Rate Comments. Oil prices advance, remain elevated above $110 a barrel
Hunter Bidenâs Laptop and Americaâs Crisis of Accountability
The New York Times now admits the story was real. News and social-media companies will pay no price for suppressing vital information in 2020.
By Gerard Baker of The Wall Street Journal
In close elections, a fraction of the total vote distributed in the right places can swing an outcome, and we can never be sure what effect late news stories can have.
If it hadnât been for a suspiciously well-timed report of a decades-old driving-under-the-influence arrest in the final days of the 2000 presidential campaign, George W. Bush might not have needed 35 days and the judgment of the Supreme Court to deliver him the White House.
Harold Wilson, the British Labour prime minister in 1970, is said to have claimed for years afterward that Englandâs shock defeat by West Germany in the soccer World Cup quarterfinal that year so depressed the national moodâand turnoutâthat it produced his surprise ejection from 10 Downing Street in the general election days later.
Weâll never know what effect the âOctober Surpriseâ of 2020, the New York Postâs reporting of the discovery of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden containing all sorts of embarrassing emails, might have had on the election that year if it had received wider circulation. Perhaps in a campaign dominated by Covid and characterized by chaos, it would have been another snowflake in the blizzard of news voters were being hit with.
But the allegations in the reportingâthat the son of the man favored to become the next president had been selling his high-level family political connections to foreigners, including suggestions of a possible cut for his fatherâwere worth pursuing. But enough influential people in and out of governmentâin the foreign-policy-intelligence complex, in the media, and in the big tech firmsâwere so alarmed that it would affect the outcome that they pulled off one of the greatest disappearing tricks since Harry Houdini made that elephant vanish from a New York stage.
It took its time, but last week the New York Times slipped the acknowledgment of the storyâs accuracy deep in a report about Hunter Bidenâs mounting legal problems. The Times, along with most other mass-circulation news organizations, had essentially ignored the story in the days when it might have made a difference, but it now says it has âauthenticatedâ the laptopâs contents.
The concession from the paper, which serves as a sort of unofficial licensing authority for reporting by most of the rest of the media, prompted a predictable rush to self-vindication by those who had also trashed the story at the time. The Washington Post insisted its original decision not to touch it was justified because of uncertainty about its provenance.
Normally, when there is doubt about the provenance of an explosive story, news organizations consider it their job to ascertain the truth. Normally, it takes them less than 17 months to do so. But normally they donât have the cover provided by technology companies that prevented people from reading the original story.
The media and tech companies that colluded in concealing this potentially critical information didnât need any excuse to do so. But it surely helped that they were given validation for their actions by an august-sounding committee of concerned letter-writers who moved quickly to discredit the story.
In that famous letter, more than 50 former national-security and intelligence officials polished their gleaming credentials and alleged that the New York Post was guilty of peddling a story that had âall the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.â
The principal rationale for this, the letter laid out, was that the story might be helpful to Donald Trump. Russia wanted Mr. Trump to win. The story helped Mr. Trump. Ergo, it was the work of Russia.
Thatâs quite a syllogism. Using that same logic, you might conclude that Russia was also responsible for any unexpectedly good economic data that helped the incumbent, or that Vladimir Putin was behind the crime wave that had gripped Democrat-run cities.
Now we can guess why so much U.S. intelligence has been so faulty all these years. Either these 50 or so grandmasters of international espionage are completely unable to distinguish Russian disinformation from real information, or they prostituted their credentials in a naked act of political hackery. I donât have their experience or deductive skills, but Iâm ready to go with the latter.
The deeper shame here is the lack of accountability across American institutions. No one who colluded in this conspiracy against truth has even been inconvenienced by it.
Contacted by the Post last week, not one of the letterâs signatories expressed regret or contrition. The reporters and editors at news organizations and the employees and executives of tech companies who participated in the suppression continue to be lionized for their work.
This is what is so corrosive of trust and, in the end, of the system itself. The one way in which real accountability is supposed to work in a democracy is at the ballot box. But how can that even work when the people we want to hold accountable decide what information the voters are allowed to see?
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