>If the editor concludes that it's a garbage story dropped a few days before the election in an attempt to influence the election
Nobody disputes why this story was dropped at the time it was dropped. It's a common tactic that has been practiced for decades by political campaigns and even media outlets. Heck, there is a reason why the Kavanaugh story broke when it did. There is a reason why the NY Times published Trump taxes when they did.
What's different is that all of center-left/left news establishment decided that they are going to get Biden elected and protect him from any negative news.
First of all, was it "censorship" when Fox News had not a single article on Trump's taxes for many days after the NY Times pice? No, tat's not censorship, it's an editorial decision.
Second, you're missing the "garbage" part of "garbage story" in the line you quoted. A news organization has a responsibility to vet stories, and avoid publishing stories that can't be vetted.
>when Fox News had not a single article on Trump's taxes for many days after the NY Times pice
Are you saying that all the news outlets that refuse to mention this story are acting like partisan hacks??!? I AGREE!
>Second, you're missing the "garbage" part of "garbage story" in the line you quoted.
What's the 'garbage' part of this 'garbage story'?
>and avoid publishing stories that can't be vetted.
Who vetted the NY Times story? Did NY Times release the documents or their sources? Or did everyone just report it? How about the Kavanaugh allegations? Did anyone have issues putting out prosperous, unverified, and clearly false accusations just to get him and by extension Trump? How about the Steele dossier, initially an unverified, and later found to be a fabricated document, put out by the Russians and paid for by the Hillary campaign ... it served as a basis for YEARS of reporting. The last 4 years, we've seen the mainstream media throw out all semblance of journalistic integrity just to get Trump.
It isn't news that the son of a presidential candidate is and has been using his name to enrich himself, raising AT BEST questions about conflict of interest?
First there has to be credible evidence for any story to be news. It isn't news that aliens are planning to invade earth. Not because that wouldn't be a huge deal, but because there is no evidence to support it.
Second, if there is evidence of a son using a name to enrich himself but there is no evidence that the father played a part, I don't think it is news. It may be a shitty thing ethically to do from the son, but I don't think it is particularly news worthy. I thought the same thing when they were talking about how the wife of Bush Jr killed someone in a driving accident. Newsworthy if a candidate did it, not newsworthy if his wife did.
To me, it's the fact that Joe Biden didn't put a stop to this immediately. Regardless of the emails, Hunter Biden is/was a drug addict with no skills, being paid upwards of $50,000/month to be on a Board of Directors of a known corrupt company.
What skill does he possess that is worth $600,000? The only thing that makes sense is his connection to Joe Biden. It's obvious they were paying him money to be on the board because of his connection to Joe Biden, and Joe Biden should have put a stop to it. That's the crux of the issue to me. The fact that the media is forming a wall of silence around this issue really does show the vast biases they have.
This doesn't mean Trump isn't corrupt, by the way, which he is and I believe he is unfit to be president and nothing about the laptop or these emails stopped me from voting for Biden. But every tiny issue with Trump is magnified and overanalyzed by the media, but this rather big issue on Biden is swept under the rug. The media is just as corrupt and biased but the only losers are we the people.
We elected George W Bush to President, whose history isn't so far away from Hunter Biden's except that the Biden family isn't insanely wealthy.
This wasn't that long ago. Everybody should remember Bush's coke problems.
You are right that there's a double standard, but I don't think that double standard is where you assert it is.
I mean, has there been any investigation of the intelligence response to Russia having bounties on US soldiers' heads? And you think that "any small thing" by Trump gets investigated?
Four years ago we were obsessing over emails from the Clintons, which Trump would have us believe were worthy of jailing Clinton. Yet here we are four years later with absolutely no wrongdoing exposed, no grand jury indictments, etc.
The lack of awareness and short memories are astounding.
>has there been any investigation of the intelligence response to Russia having bounties on US soldiers' heads?
Yeah. It turned out to be speculative bullshit. There is no link between American solider deaths in Afghanistan to any bounty program from Russia (or even that such a bounty program has ever existed).
You may want to actually read the article. Pretty much everybody, from the Taliban, to Russians, to DoD and American intelligence, dismisses the story.
The choice lines from YOUR source:
- "On July 9, 2020, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said that Marine Gen. Kenneth McKenzie Jr. and DOD intelligence agencies have not found a link between alleged Russian bounties and that specific attack."
- "On September 14, 2020, Gen. McKenzie stated, "It just has not been proved to a level of certainty that satisfies me," reflecting a growing consensus among the U.S. military leaders that the anonymous sources initially presented in the media were either exaggerated or false."
Give me a break. If there was even an inkling that this story was true, it would be front-page news from now until election day.
>According to the New York Times, on 1 July, the National Intelligence Council, which reports to the director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, produced a two-and-a-half page document in which various intelligence agencies assessed the credibility of the existence of a bounty program based on the available evidence. Anonymous officials who had seen the memo said that the "C.I.A. and the National Counterterrorism Center had assessed with medium confidence—meaning credibly sourced and plausible, but falling short of near certainty"—that the GRU had offered bounties.
It takes evidence to get to a medium confidence assessment, it is not purely "speculative bullshit."
Very good cherry picking. Right in your paragraph it says the standard for 'medium confidence' is that it is 'plausible'. That's the best you could do? Notice, the claim put out by the NY Times was much much stronger. It actually linked a SPECIFIC American soldier death, to a GRU bounty. Where is the evidence for that?
I'm someone who believes that Bush should be in jail for crimes against humanity. But nothing you said doesn't take away from the fact that the media is corrupt right now and avoiding a real story on Biden.
If hiding behind the election of George W Bush is your defense... you need a new lawyer.
Clinton did destroy tens of thousands of emails that were under subpoena by the FBI. If you or I did that, we'd be jail for eternity. And yet...
I think this is the spirit behind "lock her up" -- the fact that there are two sets of rules for the powerful and for the rest of us. This is true for them all: Trump, Clinton, Bush and Biden.
I have no idea about the veracity of the story, but Hunter Biden went to Georgetown and Yale Law and was EVP at a massive bank holding company and founded a lobbying firm.. That resume is every bit as impressive as most people in the 'business world'.
Describing him as a "drug addict with no skills" is very misleading.
I can't reply directly to macspoofing above, so to explain it clearly: the story wasn't Biden's son enriching himself with his name -- that story has been covered by every news organization for over a year, and didn't need a new article on the eve of the election. The new story specifically relates to Joe Biden being a part of it, and enriching himself, and that's the part that no news organization has been able to verify.
>and didn't need a new article on the eve of the election.
What the heck does that mean??!??! What do you mean it "didn't need a new article on the even of the election". WHY NOT?! Because you're voting for Biden?
And by the way, Biden has denied all wrongdoing by Hunter. It is certainly relevant when you have concrete proof that his denial was wrong.
For the same reason that the NY Times suddenly publishing a front-page article on the 26 women who have accused Trump of rape [1] the week before the election would be a blatant partisan hack move.
It's well-trodden ground, it's been covered (some might say not enough, but regardless), there's no significant new news, and it would be a blatant attempt to influence the election.
In this case, the Times has written numerous stories on Hunter's use of his name to try and make money. That story isn't new. The new part of the story is the insinuation that he did this with Joe Biden's permission, and that Joe himself may have been making money. That part hasn't been verified by anyone.
>For the same reason that the NY Times suddenly publishing a front-page article on the 26 women who have accused Trump of rape [1] the week before the election would be a blatant partisan hack move.
What are you talking about??! That story was reported EVERYWHERE. If it was 'old news' why was it reported EVERYWHERE?
The fact that it didn't change the election outcome (which is what you're really complaining about) is not the same thing.
>the Times has written numerous stories on Hunter's use of his name to try and make money. That story isn't new.
Hold on a second here. There is plenty 'new' here:
- Joe Biden STILL denies any wrongdoing by himself or Hunter Biden. As it pertains to Hunter Biden's conduct, we now have direct evidence that's false. You don't think that's a story?
- How about the fact that we have direct evidence of Joe Biden being introduced (and taking photos with) with corrupt business partners of Hunter Biden?
- How about the fact that the emails show Hunter Biden trying to induce VP Biden to take actions that benefit Burisma and Chinese business deals?
- How about the fact that Hunter Biden's former business partner, Tony Bubolinski, has gone on record that Joe was planned to be involved in at least the Chinese business deal (and even if that turns out to not have happened, it isn't the salient point - his son is attempting to influence policy through his father)?
- How about the fact that Hunter Biden is being investigated by the FBI for money laundering?
- How about the fact that many outlets, including the Biden campaign and anonymous CIA officials make claims that this is Russian disinformation, when we have clear evidence it is not?
- How about the fact that a journalist that broke the Snowden story, says there is something worth reporting here but was told he couldn't by his editors and lays out his case quite cogently[1]. Greenwald is not the only one. Taibbi also noted the hypocrisy and the unprecedent nature of how this news is bing squelched. [2]
It is such a clear self-serving double-standard you're setting. You don't think it's a story, therefore it isn't a story. Meanwhile every two-bit conspiracy theory against Trump is given front-page treatment.
The irony of it all is that even if all the allegations are true, it isn't enough to sink Joe Biden. This low-level of corruption is par for course for political actors. The real story really is the abrogation of journalistic standards by mainstream news, the ad hoc censorship by social media, and the defense of these actions by Joe Biden supporters, present company included. We literally had the account of a major US newspaper banned for putting out a TRUE story, and journalists vilified or muzzled for waiting to report on it.... but it's all OK if it means Joe Biden is elected ..?
>That part hasn't been verified by anyone.
You're setting up a strawman, that the only way this story is relevant is if there is direct evidence that Joe Biden has been making money from Hunter Biden's adventures. There is certainly implications of that but that's not the most salient part of this story.
Besides if only news organizations were able to do things like ... you know .. VERIFY reports? You know, maybe by ASKING questions of the candidate?
And of course Greenwald puts your ridiculous and hypocritical standard to rest with this quote:
"First, the claim that the material is of suspect authenticity or cannot be verified ... is blatantly false for numerous reasons. As someone who has reported similar large archives in partnership with numerous media outlets around the world (including the Snowden archive in 2014 and the Intercept’s Brazil Archive over the last year showing corruption by high-level Bolsonaro officials), and who also covered the reporting of similar archives by other outlets (the Panama Papers, the WikiLeaks war logs of 2010 and DNC/Podesta emails of 2016), it is clear to me that the trove of documents from Hunter Biden’s emails has been verified in ways quite similar to those."
This isn’t any just negative news, it’s a PR campaign of epic proportions. I see plenty of legit coverage of Biden gaffes and corporate influence. Media outlets are wising up to publicists’ tactics about getting them to cover things and are making risky editorial decisions about what to run. We’ll see how it plays out.
> What's different is that all of center-left/left news establishment decided that they are going to get Biden elected and protect him from any negative news.
That’s what we all wanted right? That’s the point of all the tech folks talking about no bystanders and corporations being forced to take a political stance was about wasn’t it?
What are you talking about? I'm unsure if you're describing the tenor of comments here, but there was a clear amount of uneasiness with how these platforms are using their reach, whether with the Biden story or Uber on Prop 22.
Nobody disputes why this story was dropped at the time it was dropped. It's a common tactic that has been practiced for decades by political campaigns and even media outlets. Heck, there is a reason why the Kavanaugh story broke when it did. There is a reason why the NY Times published Trump taxes when they did.
What's different is that all of center-left/left news establishment decided that they are going to get Biden elected and protect him from any negative news.